I Won't Fly United Airlines Anymore: Now I Won't Fly Delta Either - EVER

Click on title above to read When Nature Calls, the story to which I am referring.

I laughed when Continental put out that little blue carpet for their big spenders to walk on. It was amusing to watch a few passengers purposefully, sometimes arrogantly, stride across that 2' x 5' strip of blue. I thought, "Do they know how dumb they look." After the final blue carpet treader had left his, usually, footprints on the rug, the gate agents would chain off the little piece of blue carpet, and the rest of us "regular" passengers would walk parallel to the blue carpet - just inches away from it - then through the same door that the blue-carpet people walked through, merging into one line to board the plane.

That little charade is fairly harmless and slightly amusing to all but the most obtuse; but, when a passenger, locked inside a metal tube flying through space and time, has to GO, all bets are off. Anyone who ever has had the diarrhea knows that diarrhea waits for no person, and certainly not for a beverage cart. Good grief, Delta Morons, get a modicum of common sense.

A FELONY! I wonder how many passenger fares this idiotic response to a bodily function has cost Delta? I am hoping LOTS. If this is an American business' idea of how to treat its customers, that business deserves to disappear. If this is a flight attendant's idea of how to treat a passenger, then that flight attendant needs to see a psychiatrist PRONTO. She is NUTS, and does not belong on any plane or in any position dealing with humans or animals. Rocks, maybe, but that's it.

Maybe its just me. I grew up in the white society of the 50' and 60's when we we taught that America was better than other countries because everyone was treated equally. No kings, queens or royalty for us. Even though I discovered that the "equally" part was NOT SO TRUE, especially if your skin color was a different shade from mine, I held onto, and worked for, the ideal of equal treatment for everyone, regardless of skin color. As those "Colored Only" signs came down from restrooms, water fountains, doctor's waiting rooms, movie theaters, bus sections, train cars and restaurants, it seemed a huge victory for equality, as well as for common sense. Never did I EVER imagine that in the 21st Century, someone in America could be charged with a FELONY for using a segregated restroom - segregated, not by skin color, but by class. Not by royalty and peasant class, but by airplane seat section class.

It is bad enough that someone, somewhere in the American Business World, came up with this rule that only certain people could use the tiny little pottie in the forward part of a plane NO MATTER HOW BAD THEY HAD TO GO OR HOW BLOCKED OFF THE OTHER TOILET MIGHT BE; but what about those other people who joined in and said "Oh, that's a grand idea. Let's implement that!" What is worse, is that a flight attendant, a person who is trained in safety, people skills, and care-giving; that that person physically would try to block another human being, with diarrhea, from using a toilet. It makes one want to shout, "Have these people lost their f***ing minds!"

Truly, Delta, you have lost my business forever. You join that other no-fly airline, United, whose flight attendants in 2003, treated, not just me, but all passengers in my part of coach seating, on a flight from Paris to JFK, with such rudeness, disdain, and inattention, refusing even to make eye contact with passengers, that I swore I would never fly United again.

Here is a memo to all those rule makers at the airlines: You offer low fares; we buy them. When we buy them, we do not pay for them with our dignity. Never assume that. NEVER.

A Reason NOT TO FLY

Flying used to be something my travel-loving family looked forward to, to savor and enjoy. Now, flying is something we ENDURE.

I, and I am sure millions of others, are tired of paying to be mistreated, from the time we arrive at the luggage kiosk; to the "TSA strip search," to being crumpled into too small seats, to not being allowed out of those seats "while the seat belt light is on (always!), to losing our luggage, to being herded like cattle to slaughter on returning home to the USA - to more lost luggage.

In Sept, 2003, my family flew United Airlines to Europe. Because of the lack of care and downright rudeness by United staff, on the ground and by flight attendants in the air, we swore never to fly United Airlines again, and we haven't.

However, since 2003, my family of 4 has flown to Hawaii 8 times, and to Europe 7 times, plus about 40 flights within the USA. That's at least 100 round trips. None of those were on United Airlines.

As for the current trend to charge for everything, I am not planning to pay extra to any airline for luggage handling, for food, for pillows and blankets or for any other formerly free items/services. Airlines are making what is already abominable treatment of travelers, into intolerable treatment.

Short-term thinking may create short-term cuts in airline costs, but will negatively affect airline revenues long into the future.

Airlines need to be giving us travelers a reason TO FLY; not a reason NOT TO FLY.