Boarding Games

Seriously? American Airlines' solution to the mayhem also known as the boarding process is to reward people without carry-ons with early boarding. Let me get this straight. They have to pay twenty-five dollars to check each bag, then get more time to sit in cramped seats in coach while everyone else fights for bin space, then wait at the luggage carousel for an hour after landing while everybody else whisks out of the airport with their oversized carry-ons in tow? Including the folks who got to valet their bags for free on the jetway while the flight attendants attend to the passengers still brawling on board to claim the last cubic inches of overhead bin space?

Am I an idiot, or is it unlikely most folks are going to fall for this crap? Personally, I'll need a bit more incentive to fork over twenty-five bucks to check a bag than prolonged discomfort in a tiny and smelly seat while everyone else is busy throwing punches in the aisle. And unless I am heading somewhere I really don't want to be, there's no way I'm paying to know that everyone else has arrived at their final destination while I'm stuck at the lost baggage desk trying to figure out where my clothes traveled to on my dime. Okay, so I may still be an idiot, but I am NOT checking my carry-on just so American Airlines can save face and money by boasting more timely departures.

If only everybody could just be more like my mother. (Never thought I'd say that!) A woman ahead of her time, she has travelled back and forth from New York to Chicago for years with nothing more than a Louis Vuitton purse I mean pocketbook and the crossword page from the New York Times. Granted, her pocketbook is larger, or at least heavier, than your average oversized bag, but rules are rules, and if it's billed as a pocketbook it's a personal item and it gets a free pass. Frankly, the thing is so dense and downright lethal it should probably be banned as a weapon, but since knives are fair game now, nobody is going to raise an eyebrow about Louis. Even if it's packed to the gills with small blades.

Hopefully, when my mom flies out here tomorrow, enough folks will have been seduced by American's scheme to benefit itself without benefiting anybody else to make my mother's journey through security uneventful. This time around, in addition to the pocketbook from Land of the Giants, she will be carrying a freezer case filled with osteoporosis fighting meds that cannot go through the scanners. She's been nervous about this, so I checked on line a few weeks ago to see what she needed to do to get through security without getting her meds confiscated. A doctor's note would suffice, the TSA site told me, but she should call security seventy-two hours before departure to confirm. A lifelong rule follower, she called airport security exactly -- and I mean exactly; down to the minute -- seventy-two hours prior to her flight to confirm the procedure.

Seems simple enough. I'm pretty certain most people will ignore the early boarding incentive and bring their gigantic carry-ons with them on to the plane. I just hope there aren't too many fist fights; I don't want my mom's ice packs to melt.