Hi everyone!

I’ve been absent from this space because I’ve been off exploring the world again but before I tell you all about the latest adventures I’d like to talk about the airline industry.

For example, the poor beleaguered airlines are so broke that some don’t offer snacks unless you pay, others love charging for your luggage. Do you know an overweight bag can run to over $100! Better to take 2 smaller bags and pay for the extra luggage.

They love to raise rates and I could understand that when fuel prices were high but prices have been falling yet Delta recently quietly raised prices quickly followed by American, Continental, Southwest and Jet Blue.

The price hike comes at a precarious time for the industry, which is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for potentially conspiring to limit flights and keep fares high.

As if that wasn’t enough shrinking legroom on flights and narrower airline seats have prompted complaints by squeezed travelers all over. But what can be done about it, besides paying for an upgrade?

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., has introduced a bill in Congress aimed at setting minimum seat sizes for airline passengers.

We flew American Airlines to Las Vegas this week. American is not usually my airline of choice as you can see it ranks 7 out of 8 with 8 being the worst.

We had a pretty comfortable flight down, on time , comfortable seats and nice flight attendant. We even discussed how comfortable and pleasant the flight was. But the return flight wasn’t quite up to par.

We boarded on time but then the gate attendant came on board and started removing stand-by passengers. There was some snafu so they all had to leave the plane. The resulting on, off and on again process delayed take off by almost 40 minutes. Then once we were in the air we were plagued by turbulence. Of course that’s mother nature and the airline can’t be blamed for that but as a result our 2 hour layover shrunk to 30 minutes.

That still would have been ok except we landed at terminal B and our connecting flight was in terminal F.  That required a mad dash through  terminals C & D  then out to the tarmac to catch a shuttle past terminal E, finally reaching Terminal F with only 5 minutes to spare. No time for dinner before we were squeezed onto a tiny plane with only 12 rows and the tiniest overhead bins I’ve ever seen!

At least the flight crew and attendants were nice on all flights but  the delay was inexcusable. No wonder American was  ranked 7th out of 8 in overall service.

What do you think? What experiences (good and bad) have you had on any airline?