Oh For the New VLJs!

I was very frustrated earlier this week. I had a very bad experience flying thru DFW Airport on my trip to Wilburton, OK. I left home at 1 pm to drive to the St. Louis airport, flew thru the hub in Dallas, connecting thru to Ft. Smith, AR, where I picked up a car to drive onto my final destination. It took me 9+ hours to fly/drive there, almost exactly the same time that it would have taken me to drive the 590 miles. I averaged 65 mph flying/driving, actually better than the 57 mph that NASA showed on average for distances of less than 500 miles.

By point-to-point air service the distance is cut to 490 miles. If one of the new air taxi companies that I continue to research and write about had been operational I could have made the trip in less than 2 hours. Oh, for those new Very Light Jets (VLJs). They can’t come soon enough.

Following is an email that I wrote in frustration to my travel coordinator at Agracel. I reported on the events that occurred on that trip but perhaps exaggerated a bit on some of the people that I ran into along the way. I actually barely did make my flight. Here is my email:

It is always such a pleasant experience to get to fly thru DFW. My flight was on time (that is a first!) but we got to the gate and had to wait about 10 minutes so that they could get the gate ready for us. We arrived at the gate, got out of seats and were ready to get off of the plane when the air hostess announced over the intercom, “There is someone at the gangway, but she doesn’t seem to know how to operate it. However, we can see that she is on the phone and we hope that she is getting directions on how to get it to move toward the plane.”

Thank goodness she is not a pilot!

After patiently waiting for another 5 to 10 minutes, she figured it out and we deplaned. Hardly anyone noticed that there was about a twelve inch drop from the plane to the gangway. How far do you think you can drop a roller board without damaging a wheel?

“Could you tell me what gate the flight to Ft. Smith is leaving from?” I asked as I got to the arrival gate at C 28.

“Why yes hun (Yep, this is Texas!), you have to go to gate A-2-D”

Huh!!! A-2-D? Wasn’t that a robot in a Star Wars Movie, or something? Who has ever heard of gate A-2-D?

I didn’t lose my cool yet, “How do I get to A-2-D?”

“Why you just walk down to C-2 and get on the train and ride it two stops. You’re almost there then.” Famous last words.

Did I tell you that I only had 42 minutes from the time the plane landed until my flight left for Fr. Smith? And guess how many flights/day they have to Ft. Smith?

So I walk all the way from C 28 to C 2, which is twice as long as it takes in a “normal” airport. That is because DFW’s terminals are laid out in semi-circles. They were designed prior to security concerns, built so that you could drive right up to the gate and park right in front of your gate. The effect is that you have ½ of the normal gates in a mile and it seemed like a mile as I walked to C 2.

And, then I waited for the train. They have this message board above the train entrance that says, “Train arrives every 2 minutes.” Evidently, just like everything else in Texas their minutes are a big bigger than back home. I wish I had timed it, cause it seemed more like 10.

By the time that the train pulls up, there is a pretty big crowd waiting to get on the train. The first 3 get on the train and this voice comes blaring out of the loudspeaker, “The doors are closing. Please stand out of the way.”

Evidently, they had to make up for the lost time of not getting there within the two minutes that they advertise.

I sure hope that little old lady that I bumped as I lunged for the door didn’t break anything and was able to recuperate by the time the next train came in the advertised two minutes.

About 5 or 6 minutes later we arrive at the second stop. Are you keeping track of the time? Fortunately, I am the first one off of the train. There is some accounting principle involved: LIFO, Last in First out.

The train arrives at gate A 12. No sweat! I’ve still got about 12 minutes to get to A-2-D

Oh oh! You have to go DOWN an escalator to get to gate A-2. Surely D is around here someplace!

“Let me see your boarding pass!” She’s definitely not from Texas. Looks like a misplaced New Yorker.

“Get on the bus.”

BUS? BUS? I thought I was flying?

Bubba Billy Joe, the bus driver told us that he had a full tank of gas. I think that he was trying to make a joke.

It wasn’t. Not only was Bubba a frustrated NASCAR driver but I thought that he was going to drive us to Ft. Smith. I know that Texas is big, but I didn’t know that DFW was that big! We saw parts of the airport that I’m sure people in Dallas didn’t know existed.

We finally got to another building that had gates A-2 (A thru F). It is now 5 minutes past when my plane was supposed to leave for Ft. Smith, but the speaking gods were looking down on me and my plane was 20 minutes late leaving.

Please try not to book me thru Dallas in the future.

Your faithful traveler,
Jack