I've accepted the fact that going to the airport, especially trying to deal with LaGuardia, is a crap shoot in which most odds are stacked heavily against the customer being in any way respected. We have to en masse figure out a way to force them to change their current policies. That's a discussion for another time. I would like, however, an accurate, step-by-step explanation of why on a rainy day, LaGuardia gets backed up by four hours. I had a 3pm flight. It's now a 7pm flight, maybe. It's just rain. I'd expect there to be some delays, but four hours is totally ridiculous. One would think that after fifty-odd years of consistent domestic flight travel, they could deal with a rain storm. Just explain it to me so I can move on, it's far less aggravating than standing at a gate waiting for an announcement which will be bullshit anyway because the airlines lie to their customers.

Lastly, with LaGuardia doing so much business, you'd think they'd have the resources to invest in cleaning up their system which is so clearly completely inadequate. I'm not a huge fan of government intervention, but when an industry that has been recently granted deregulation steadfastly refuses to clean itself up in any way, there's little reason to allow it to stay deregulated. It may well be that the true problem lies with the airports themselves and not the airlines. Airports are restrained by local government in what they can and cannot do, so it may well be that my earlier complaint about LaG not doing anything is unfounded and the state or city is holding them back from making improvements. If work continues to be slow, I'll have to look into these things.
- posted by levinson @ 11/26/2000 01:08:00 PM