Off to the airport. Managed to pack everything into one carry-on bag for the week, so I strolled up to the little United kiosk for carry-on only.<\/p>\n
Well, the good news is that Dave Hill, International Man of Mystery, seems to have dropped off the radar. But the bad news was, the kiosk wouldn’t give me a seat.<\/p>\n
It would give me a seat if I was willing to pony up an extra $24 for an Economy Plus seat. But when I declined that, and asked to select a seat …<\/p>\n
… no open seats came up.<\/p>\n
“Go to the gate to get a seat assignment,” the kiosk indicated, spitting out a Passenger Management Card or some such instead of a boarding pass.<\/p>\n
Swell.<\/p>\n
No problem getting through security. Went straight to the gate, worried about what it all might mean.<\/p>\n
Walked up. They had several boarding passes, already printed. I saw that one had my name on it. I told the lady there that the kiosk had told me I had to visit her for a seat assignment.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, what’s with that?” she said, though it was difficult to tell if her irk was feigned or not. “You’re here first — I assume you want the aisle seat?” Instead, it seemed, looking at the two passes she picked up, of a middle seat. Oh, yeah. Four rows further back, but not a middle. Yeah.<\/p>\n
She tore up two passes, including my (old) 15B, and handed me a 19D.<\/p>\n
End of story?<\/p>\n
No, this flight, for unknown reasons, they decided to go with the odd “layered” boarding. In other words, after the Elite Program Members (rattle off a dozen different programs here) got to board, then they boarded all of the windows seats (A and F), then the middle seats (B and E), then finally the (ta-dah!) aisle seats (C and D).<\/p>\n
The reason for this is, ostensibly, to spread the wealth, to keep aisle congestion down as people sit themselves the length of the plane, to keep the “excuse me, please get up, I have to get past you to my window seat” stuff down. Fine.<\/p>\n
But instead, it means that there’s congestion and movement all up and down the aisle, and the cargo space gets taken first by the window and middle seats, all up and down the plane.<\/p>\n
*sigh*<\/p>\n
Managed to get on anyway, for an otherwise uneventful flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Off to the airport. Managed to pack everything into one carry-on bag for the week, so I strolled up to the little United kiosk for carry-on only. Well, the good…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6692,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/02\/your_papers_ple.html","url_meta":{"origin":8058,"position":0},"title":"“Your papers, please!”","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 2-Aug-04 11:48am","format":false,"excerpt":"I approached the United automatic check-in kiosk with mild trepidation. Swiped my card and ... oh, keen. Frontier at least let me play with seat assignments; United immediately says I...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32889,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/24\/dear-united-convenient-kiosk.html","url_meta":{"origin":8058,"position":1},"title":"Dear United: Convenient kiosk …","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 24-Mar-13 8:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear United: Convenient kiosk use is less so when every other screen is an ad for upgrades. With a tiny decline button. Really.","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12256,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/13\/more_on_luggage_shipping.html","url_meta":{"origin":8058,"position":2},"title":"More on luggage “shipping costs” by the airlines","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 13-Jun-08 6:12am","format":false,"excerpt":"The more I ponder this, the more irritated I get. United expects that \"only\" a third of its domestic fliers will be impacted by this fee. The two exempt groups...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6988,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/11\/17\/travelogue_3_3.html","url_meta":{"origin":8058,"position":3},"title":"Travelogue #3","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Nov-04 3:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Unfortunately, a rather unproductive day. Pity, that. Woke up, big breakfast, all packed, all checked out ... 40 minutes before my pickup time. *Sigh* Driver picked me up, drove me...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22419,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/30\/allllll-a-board.html","url_meta":{"origin":8058,"position":4},"title":"Allllll a-BOARD!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Aug-11 3:08pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Regular as clockwork, some time during each summer's travel season we get some new scientifically proven article about airplane boarding that demonstrates: However we're doing it right now, we're doing it wrong. Physicists and mathematicians don't do a lot of air travel. The current article making the rounds is described\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boarding-schemes.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boarding-schemes.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boarding-schemes.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boarding-schemes.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6926,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/12\/02\/back_barely.html","url_meta":{"origin":8058,"position":5},"title":"Back (barely)","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Dec-04 7:38am","format":false,"excerpt":"So my flight back from Atlanta departs at 7:07p. A group of about seven of us hop aboard the MARTA (and, to be sure, go whizzing past some truly horrific...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}