I'm heading off to the States on June 5th. The travel agent I had used two years ago had done a good job back then, but she fumbled the ball this time around, listing my name incorrectly when she made the reservations. She then said that a name change would cost me $100, so I had to remind her that I had stated my full, proper name to her in my emails, and that the fault wasn't mine. The travel agent agreed to make the changes at no cost to me, but she took about a week to do it. My father, who's a retired airline employee, knows the system and became involved in the wrangling. Thanks to him, I do believe the problem's been straightened out.
Why is something as simple as air travel such a pain in the ass to arrange?
Before you write in: yeah, I know some will say "it isn't simple." I disagree. How hard is it to hop in a car, bus, subway, or train and go somewhere?
I keep hoping that we'll get around to creating those gigantic superblimps-- cheap* air travel for the masses, scudding about in the high atmosphere, taking a few days to get where we're going, but getting there safely.
*I was shocked to discover that traveling by freighter is actually damn expensive. Maybe blimp travel won't be so cheap, after all.
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It may come to air travel via blimp, someday. Assuming oil will peak – there is only so much of it in the Earth, after all – and ethanol isn’t suitable for jet engines. But ethanol is fine for combustion engines that drive props, and a blimp could carry the fuel required (ethanol has about 20 percent or so less energy that petroleum, so more would be required).
ReplyDeleteBlimpie subs on blimpiesez? OH?!
ReplyDeleteBut we already have giant superblimps. See here, for example.
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