This past Fri-Tues marked my first visit to New York, New York. Monica and I went to visit Max and Shannon at their new dwelling in Manhattan.
The trip started off with the usual airline shenanigans. Severe weather in Chicago meant that Air Traffic Control had to delay flights on Thursday and the airlines in their constant disregard for customer service now have an overbooked Friday. Our 7 am flight out of Midway is now cancelled. By the way, the intense and frequent thunderstorms are awesome from the 18th floor. We now have a 4 pm flight from Midway to Minneapolis to Newark. Originally, we were flying from Midway to Detroit to JFK, so no only are we delayed, but we are inconvenienced by a trip to New Jersey. From the connections you can probably tell this is a Northwest Airlines flight. Of the major carriers NWA is not even rated as one of the worst. Somehow our Eagan based woes are outdone by other major carriers!
After a public transit adventure, we make it to Midway. At the check-in counter I slide my credit card in, see my name pop up, and look to check in to our flight on Saturday, Aug 25 at 1:30 pm…wait Saturday…it was Friday and we were leaving at 4:00 pm, not tomorrow afternoon. A few stunned minutes led to a scuffle with the NWA agent at the ticket counter, but alas the problem was worked out and we were back on our 4:00 pm flight. When the airline rebooked us due to weather they called and confirmed, but this second rebooking happened with no warning. The lovely thing about the airlines is that no one wants to take responsibility. The problem is government regulations, security, air traffic, weather, or unions, but you will never here an “oops! we erred here is a refund”. Any other business would not survive with this level of customer service unless it is heavily government regulated (anyone ever dealth with comcast before?) or it is the government (ie DMV). You can be confident that NWA will spend money lobbying to get government assistance while it is in bankruptcy. Several airlines are in bankruptcy and this is one of the worst years for delays!
Major U.S. airlines are on track for their worst annual record for on-time performance ever with nearly a third of all flights delayed in June, government figures showed Monday.
…But consumer and other industry experts say carriers have been saturating the system in recent years, leaving less and less recovery margin for unexpected events, like thunderstorms, aircraft mechanical problems or security delays.
So it is great when you see a headline that carriers are starting to operate at capacity, you think “maybe they will finally get their act together, fill planes, and make money”. What this actually means is that any hiccup in scheduling will cause a delay domino effect. These unprofitable companies also beg cities for more and larger runways against the will of local neighborhoods. Granted, we should not bow down to people whining about airline noise when they are well compensated and have sound insulation paid for becasue airports are an essential economic hub. The root problem of airline irresponsibility needs to be covered before we start slapping band-aids on this ailing industry.
“The analogy is the bridge in Minnesota,” Abbey said. “When you don’t deal with infrastructure, it collapses.” Many major hub airports, for example, are constrained by limited gates and runways available to handle the growing traffic.
Airlines need to start serving their customers, these problems are not new! Everyone has experienced this or heard about it, Bill has made several airline related blog posts. It is problematic when airlines are giving themselves a greater cushion for being on time, but still having the worst delays in history.
The federal government is taking a good step by updating the air traffic control system of the country and implementing satellite based techonologies. Local governments in NY and NJ are creating passenger bills of rights to protect travelers from being trapped on a plane for 10+ hours without any amenities. These are good steps forward and I hope in the near future we let the green paper with dead presidents on it determine what airlines survive because it makes the rest of our economy function so well and timely. I highly doubt you’ll see the Nasdaq or NYSE open 2:15 late tomorrow morning!
Cue end of airline rant…for now.
We arrive in Minneapolis and have a small meal at the French Meadow Bakery. Worst dinner ever! I am going to trust Monica’s opinion that the actual non-airport restaurant is delicious, but this was horrible. Enough said, you do not want to hear any more complaining. Being the smart people we are we check the board for our gate and take a seat nearby. All of the sudden we notice that they are announcing the last call for a flight to Houston…not to Newark, so we recheck the board and take off sprinting for the C concourse. We make it to the gate right as the door is closing (how cliche, huh?). The flight we were looking at was for 6:30 to Newark which was a time on our ticket…for boarding, but not for departure.
I call my mom and have an odd stay overnight at home. Weird feeling a few weeks after saying goodbye happening to be back in Ham Lake…even weirder because I have been out of the house for a few years. The next morning at 12:00 pm we catch a flight to New Jersey. Oh wait, that was supposed to happen…of course, the required delay of 2:00 is thrown into the mix. We leave Minneapolis at 2:15 pm, but not without bitching a bit first.
Monica and I meet Rebecca at gate C7 to inform her of our frustrating travel experience. She gives us a lot of attitude, but gets us seats together for the way home. Unsatisified with her ability to compnesate us, Monica requests to see the person above her. Shuffling up the corporate ladder we meet a woman who actually listens to us, takes down our complaint, and gives us a meal voucher, frequent flyer miles, and a coupon for a future flight…this helps. With the meal voucher we have a delicious meal at Friday’s composed of fried mac and cheese, parmesan encrusted quesadillas, cheesecake, and a brownie sundae.
NJ turned out to be ugly from the getgo. To boot it smelled bad. Skipping a few other travel related mishaps, we finally met Shannon and Mike at Penn Station. Luckily, on our first subway trip in NY we saw two rats. Ferocious creatures that survived the rodenticide. I cannot explain why, but the subway stations are a good 20 degrees warmer than above ground in NYC. A crowded subway is another 5 degrees worse. An amazing system though considering that it debuted in 1904.
My first impression of New York was that it feels like you are in New York City. It is everything you expect and a few more bums (and their urine). It is the most complicated city I have ever been in, but the mass transit is very well organized. I only had the pleasure of visiting one borough, Manhattan, so keep that in mind when reading this review of the city.
Our welcoming party of Max, Shannon, and Mike led us downtown to a bar, but our shorts-wearing habits precluded some of us from entering. We found another place and kicked back, catching up. We even gave Tony a call, but he did not recognize Max on the phone…so Max declared Tony is dead to him.
Times Square is bright.
5th Ave has museums and a lot of shopping. This is the most intimidating shopping scene I have ever experienced. I love the Mall of America. I know it well after many nerdy powerwalking sessions through it and a later affinity for shopping itself and not just the mall. I feel comfortable navigating it. Even shopping on Nicollet Ave in Minneapolis is reasonable and thanks to the skyways partially indoors. In Chicago it is taking a little getting used to, but its pretty easy because you only need to know one road, Michigan Ave. New York is chaos. 5th Ave is a starting point, but there are boutiques and department stores on all offshoots of said important shopping avenue. For entertainment sake we visited Louis Vitton, Coach, and other such fine boutique stores. Once getting past the intimidating facade these stores are easy to shop in because very few people frequent them. Stores like H&M and Abercrombie & Fitch are hell because a sea of people overwhelms your senses (along with cheap cologne). It is so busy inside these stores that it is impossible to shop. This is hard to understand becasue I can go to Rosedale in Roseville, MN and shop in an empty A&F. Needless to say, it was fun to visit a fashion center of that nature.
Never go to Maxie’s Cafe. NEVER! Why pay $25 for a turkey sandwich when you can get half price appetizers at Applebee’s? Plus the fried food they deliver is delicious! Also, Maxie’s has a $3 sharing charge…even for appetizers! WTF?!?!
I do not understand modern art. We visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Armor and Weapons section was awesome. Egypt is scary and it does not surprise me that things of a related nature are a popular topic for the horror genre. The hard thing about this museum is that it is part a history museum with Roman, Greek, and Egyptian sections (along with a few others). After being in Italy and seeing the Vatican full of marble statues lined up next to each other…it is hard to appreciate a few of them deemed important by god knows who in NYC. The fact of the matter is when you are visiting the place where an ancient empire once ruled you can only take so many ruins and artifacts! So when visiting NYC do you want to see any at all? There is obviously educational value and versus the perils of modern art I would much rather see the tomb a mummy lied in.
Central Park makes you lose any sense of being in an enormous city. The park is huge! It is hard to explain, but I am certain it would be incredible having the oppurtunity to explore it more. It is also home to one of the strangest sites I have ever seen. A group of people roller skating to dance music. Yes, roller skating dancing. I am sure there are fascinating stores of people taking a break from their 9-5 on Sunday afternoons and skating at the circle in the park. Seriously, if you see me ask to see the video on my phone the people are SOO strange. One man on Segway was attempting to pick up the older roller chicks. What an odd place…
On Tues we left from La Guardia to Detroit to O’hare. Six airports in five days, what an adventure. The cab ride to the airport in Queens felt like being in a mob movie…ask me about it sometime!
Hopefully, I can keep up with this blog and give you a Chicago/move related entry soon. Good luck if you are starting classes again soon!!!
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