Flying the Friendly Skies

I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport at 7 am on Saturday morning. I left my hotel at 5:30 am, so in reality I’ve probably made good time for my 8:10 am flight home (or rather, to Dayton).

This trip has been a series of really good things and unexpected things. The unexpected weren’t always good – there was the fact that all the parking at the tiny Dayton airport was full on Wednesday, forcing me to actually create a space in the short-term lot. That will be a bit of an expense. Wednesday was also the day that AirTran launched a new computer system without training their employees. Throw them in the deep end and watch them drown. When I upgraded to 1^st Class, they erred and upgraded both directions and let me keep it. That was an unexpected blessing. It’s only $35 to upgrade to 1^st on Air Tran and I got two upgrades for the price of one.

The seminar itself was amazing. I need to think on it a little more over the weekend and I’ll blog my impressions on the business blog come Monday. This was a small group – only 14 people – and I came out of it with a close new friend and potential business partner, several potential opportunities, and an absolute excitement about some of the things I can do with Instructional Design and eLearning. We didn’t party every night, but one or two of us would stay up talking about everything under the sun until the wee small hours of the morning. There are so many exciting things on which I can’t wait to follow-up and it can definitely be said that I am bringing home all sorts of new knowledge.

This morning I left the hotel at 5:30 and got to the Thrifty Rental Car return (off-airport) at 6 am. They did not have the guys with the little check-in/receipt machines. Everyone had to go inside to return their car. There was only one poor girl at the counter. She kept insisting that we all just write down our mileage and leave but every single one of us needed a receipt for an expense report. It was crazy. There was a local family renting a car in front of all of us. They couldn’t decide on a color or type of car, of what credit card to use, and a million other things.

After finally getting to the airport proper, I discovered that the Air Tran line to check just baggage (I was checked in online) was a quarter of a mile long – no exaggeration. Despite the fact that most of us already had checked in online and had boarding passes, checking luggage was still an issue. It was compounded by the fact that about 50% of the folks in line were completely unable to use the electronic kiosks. If there was a ever a need for context-sensitive, just-in-time training, I witnessed it this morning. From the time I pulled into the Thrifty lot until I hit airport security, my morning was absolute chaos.

Security was easy. They have a special, uber-fast line for 1^st Class, Business Class, and Platinum flyers. That was fantastic, but would have pissed me off had I been in Coach. After security, I took an elevator down to the terminal trams. People literally raced off the escalator to take a tram. There were 4 escalators down and everyone ran. Well, I didn’t. What’s another two minutes to wait for the next tram? After I exited the tram to my terminal, with everyone else, I headed to the single escalator leading up into the terminal. It was an absolute crush of people. Atlanta is an airport badly in need of redesigning. With the advent of electronic kiosks, baggage only lines, and placing the giant TSA luggage machines in the ticketing area, the airport is running out of room for people to check in for flights. Once the crush has managed to actually check in, there is an amazing lack of efficiency applied to getting the masses to their flights. This place needs a lean manufacturing consultant (better use of space, use of efficiency in transport, etc) and an architect. They also need a free wireless network.