My Weekend

Well, I managed to get home to visit Mom and Dad on Saturday morning. I was the next-to-last standby passenger able to board the morning flight to Atlanta.

And, as a hint for future travellers: The US Airways Express planes at the Philadelphia F terminal are all small little jets. If you're taking a commuter hop to, oh, State College, they're fine. On the other hand, if you're flying for more than 90 minutes, I can only recommend avoiding the gate, and those flights. Further, on the two occasions I have flown on holidays (this weekend and Christmas), they have had long lines, and overburdened staff.

And there are more basic problems with the design of the airport: the Embraer's hold about 40 passengers when full. Each gate only has about 25 chairs (in the 8 hours I spent at the airport Friday, I had plenty of time to count.)

When everything is going fine, no problem, just sit in the seats next door to your gate. However, when (as on Friday) weather is stopping all flights, it leaves you with lots of people milling around without a place to sit. There is a small food court attached to F terminal, but the Euro Cafe's have a pretty good selection of newspapers and magazines and not much else. Fine for a commuter flight, torture if you're stuck for hours at the airport.

So, when trouble emerges, the F terminal is almost guaranteed to get filled with angry, frustrated people with nowhere to sit and nothing to do (well, they do have a nice art installation, but that'll kill at most 30 minutes.)

The main hallway where everyone walks is also quite narrow (for an airport). So when the golf carts come beeping and driving through, there's not enough room to move out of the way.

And, there appears to be no mechanism for handling cancellations surges. When a full flight cancels, of course, there are going to be about 40 people who all need to have their travel plans booked. This takes a while to sort through, of course. Well, think about what happens when you require people to rebook at the gate. After my flight cancelled Friday, I waited 50 minutes to get to the front of the line to get my travel plans fixed. And I heard the maddening announcement of the PA system "Gate Agents, please rebook at gate. Do not send customers to Special Services."

In other words: "Yeah, we know it sucks for the people at the gate, and we know the customers are getting angry and need help, but don't sent 'em to us."

So, to recap. Avoid flights leaving from Philadelphia's F terminal.

Anyway, on to more pleasant topics:

So I got to see the new house. Big yard and good neighbors (I met some of them). And on Sunday, I got to go to church, where again I was impressed by the friendly folks.

The travel, and the uncertainly associated with it, has left me a bit tired, but otherwise I feel pretty good about my classes (exams are next week, so this weekend will be full studying.)