The Occasionally Friendly Skies

My sister flew in from St. Louis last week-end and I picked her up at the airport.  She came because it was her birthday and Southwest had $39 flights!  You just had to book them during a certain period of time, fly certain times, wear blue eye shadow when you flew and type with your left hand.  Okay, not the eye shadow.  But you get the picture.  There are great fares out there but you have to be savvy and flexible.  And she did miss the $39 window, but she was able to get a flight for $59.

Quite a contrast to last month when we were trying to figure out how we could all fly to New Hampshire to be there for our nephew's memorial service, but given the short lead time, $1600 to $2100 ticket prices for the two of us, and Dennis's physical limitations, it just couldn't seem to be done even though Dennis and Jake spent two whole days online and on the phone trying to make it work

Our son, Josh, was able to go from Oklahoma City, though, and he texted  "If you are ever in the Detroit airport at breakfast time, don't eat the food."  Yes, he had to get up at five in the morning to have a lay-over in Detroit to get to New England.  After seven hours in planes and airports he did make it to Manchester.  We flew to San Francisco for our twenty-fifth anniversary--no, it wasn't a bi-plane!!--and had to go from Oklahoma City east to St. Louis before we went west to California.  No wonder they complain about the cost of fuel. They add it to the price of a ticket, of course.

Yeah, I know I say this all the time, but things sure have changed since the old days. And, no, we didn't fly with Orville and Wilbur! There was a time when Dennis flew every week.  He got a certificate from United Airlines once because he had flown 100,000 miles in one year with them.  He looked up his old frequent flyer record to see if the points would still apply for us to fly to Manchester but when he called they said 1984 was a little too far back for them to honor them.

When we lived in California I flew much more often too.  There was a "Red-eye" flight between Los Angeles and  St. Louis. You left around midnight, flew through the night and arrived the next morning. There was a reason they called it the Red-eye, of course. You just thought you were going to sleep the whole way there and arrive refreshed and ready to go.

It was always exciting arriving back at LAX hoping to see a celebrity or two. We saw Walter Matthau and his wife once. She wore white make-up so pale she kind of glowed, like the moon, and had at least forty-five pieces of luggage.  They didn't fly in our part of the plane.  And there was a lady on one of our flights who had a role on "Dallas" but I didn't know her name. She didn't seem to know mine either. Can you believe we saw Bob Hope once, talking on a pay phone calling for someone to come pick him up? I wanted to offer him a ride but Dennis didn't think it would be a good idea.

Naturally I always dressed up for flying back then and looked very sophisticated and important.  I think people were looking at me wondering what TV show they had seen me on.  I just smiled slightly in acknowledgement so they would realize I was flying coach with the "little people" because I was researching a role or something.  Of course, that time I was five months pregnant and took my shoes off on the flight but my feet were too swollen to get them back on by the time we arrived and I had to walk through the Los Angeles airport barefoot, the sophistication level may have been a little low.

Children used to get to fly free up until they were two years old, and Josh was always excited to get to go when we flew. He would watch the plane come up to the window and jump up and down with excitement, but by the time we went down the concourse and got on he would say "Where's the plane? Where's the plane?".  It doesn't look as big or even much like an airplane from the inside, more like a city bus that has been micro-sized but smells worse.

There were meals served on flights back in the old days.  Real china plates and little Barbie-size silverware,   People joked about the food being bad but at least they gave you something.  Now you are lucky if you get half a can of Coke and a bag with 13 pretzels in it.  What's up with that, anyway?  You pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket and they can't give you the whole can?  Please!

So now American Airlines has filed for bankruptcy reorganization. I think they should take a page from Southwest's book and offer some really good prices and get a lot of people flying.  I would even wear blue eye shadow for a $39 ticket.