Ahh it's been a while hasn't it. Enjoy your break? I did! Well except for a few things which I'm fully prepared to rant and rave about. Guess what. They all involve Delta Airlines!

Gripe One: Supplies
So for some reason, I got stuck in the back of a flight on my way down to vacation with my family. We were about 3/4 of the way to the back of the plane. While the flight probably wasn't long enough to merit full meal service, it was about 5 hours right through lunch time, and a growing boy needs his food! Anyways, by the time the cart got all the way back to us, there was only a "Southwest" "Chicken" "Sandwich" left. I use quotes, not because I'm trying to be hip and using air quotes needlessly, but rather because I actually attempted to eat said sandwich and failed to find any trace of the three claims implied by the title. I think there was egg in it somewhere, or tofu...and sauce. I only ate half and rounded out my lunch with peanuts. (SIDEBAR: Why are peanuts back? There was a 4 year stint where I was forced to eat pretzel sticks...but now they are back? Was there a peanut famine?)

Appropriately, a letter was written and frequent flier points awarded. (I hope the people behind us got more, because I took the last sandwich from them!). To make matters worse, on the way back from this trip, they ran out of headphones. Of course, I have my own Sennheiser headphones which I LOVE, but still, to run out of headphones?

Point of the matter, most airlines are allowed to run these absurd gambling games which are a consumer double-whammy: 1) How far can we over-book the plane before people notice while at the same time 2) How low can we stock the plane such that 95% of the people get what they want. It's gone too far. Obama supposedly enacted some measure that compels airlines to feed you after you've been on the ground for 4 hours, which is a start. I simply don't understand how low-cost carriers (Southwest, Jet Blue, etc.) can charge FAR less while still not making such egregious errors. They are also the only two airlines which still don't charge for luggage. Are large-scale carriers networks so bad that they really cost that much more to operate? Where does the overhead come from?

Charge 2: Ninjas
So I'm hanging out in FNT, waiting to board my plane to come back out East when all of the sudden I find a gate check tag on my bag. What!? WTF! For reference, gate check tags are usually an issue on smaller planes such as SAAB and CRJs where overhead bins are smaller, so they take your bags at the gate and put it under the plane.

So I finally tracked down some gate agent who was surreptitiously putting tags on peoples bags and asked her why she gave me one and told her I didn't need it. She set down her Ninja tags and told me that my bag was too big to go over or under my seat. I let her know that I had stuffed my (albeit) huge backpack under the seats in a CRJ about 10 times without fail, but she insisted it was too big. So I walked out to the plane in shame. I tried to give it to the baggage handler, but she told me I could probably put it under my seat. So I did, and all was well.

Lesson: Look out for Gate Ninjas.

Charge pi: Drinks
This is more of a question than a charge, and really I just wanted a third item for my list, but what is the logic behind whether they give you a glass of apple juice or the whole can? From my observations there is 0 correlation...thoughts?

Well that concludes my little rant, hopefully everyone else had safe travels over break! Look for renewed posts in the future (perhaps). I'm hoping to work on an independent project this semester in Computer Science, so look for a bunch of posts about my experiences with that. Happy Shopping Period!