-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
We're in it Now
I am sorry to tell you the pictures will have to wait. I refuse to upload to my work computer and that is the one I have here. I was asked to speak at a conference, which was awesome enough. But when I heard it was in Alaska..can I just say one more time that I love my job?
United made my day when I arrived at the airport because I’d been upgraded to First Class for the flight from O’Hare to Seattle. I’d already planned on using my club pass that day, so it felt all luxurious.
I’d been in the United Club once or twice before. I remembered it as free soft drinks, free snacks, open charging stations and quiet. So, it is pretty nice, but not worth paying for. So, yeah. I had some fruit and yogurt and ice water. The coffee was terrible.
The flight was delayed, but I had plenty of time to make the connection. The Seattle to Anchorage plane was one of the new ones, and I was sitting in Economy Plus.
I can’t imagine how bad it was, sitting in the back.
The first thing I noticed was everything was all nice and pretty, but the seats were terribly uncomfortable. The second thing I noticed was the TV screen above my tray table. The third thing I noticed were the signs for charging outlets. They seemed to be underneath our seats. Which I thought was great for half a second, then I realized: that much less space under the seats for carry ons. Beh.
So there are TVs at each seat. They were playing a golf tournament, but I saw someone in the row infront of me changing channels – it was DirectTV! I was all, “I bet there is an NCIS marathon on!”
Denied.
Which was ok because I found the Sox game. And it hit me that there have been a non-zero number of important games I have missed, in whole or in part, because I was on an airplane. tTis would be awesome.
Then I saw the fine print. The DirectTV was only a free preview. We’d get it for fifteen minutes or so, then have to pay for it. $5.99 for a flight of two hours or less and $7.99 for over two hours.
I would pay that for a Bears game, but not much else.
So the flight takes off and the preview ends and we non-paying losers get a stream of commercials running on loop. Not even the movie that we used to get. Just ads. I read my book. And then, perhaps 30 minutes later:
Message on the screen said, “We are leaving the DirectTV zone. But you will stil have access to..(somethingsomething).” The regular sit-com/reality TV/movie programming that you would see on any other flight.
They are sooooooo lucky I hadn’t thrown down that $7.99 for the Sox game. Instead, I spent 3.5 hours trying to sleep with a guy’s elbow in my side. And that was on a 737.
The Next Dark Age 