Summer Airports

Ok so I travel with work a lot - and have travelled a hell of a lot over the last 15 years, far too many days, nights, weeks & months away from my family and home. It's good to travel and see the world, meet people and experience cultures etc - but all too often it's just a taxi, and office and a Holiday Inn hotel that I get to see :(

So what has wound me up about the last 2 week's travel within Europe then?

Well mainly :-

• Bloomin Awful (airline) - for removing their self check-in computer terminals @ Düsseldorf airport and now forcing either on-line check-in (not easy to get the print out when travelling) or a vast queue

• Bloomin Awful (airline) - for not using mobile phone bar-codes for check-in unlike certain other airlines that are actually in the 21st centuary
  

• Alitalia (airline) - for their self check-in computers not accepting 95% of UK etickets or London as a destination, thus forcing to queue to check-in
  

• Tourists & holidaymakers - moving like they've never seen an airport or plane before. People that regard air-travel as a pleasure voyage rather than the chore that it is are in the same group here...
  

• Gatwick airport - it's full of glowing orange UK holiday makers, showing the very worse of the nation in the harshest light. Put a fence around the place, padlock the gate and switch the lights off. Please. Next time I'll walk or swim rather than fly through there...
  

• Heathrow airport Terminal 2 - for only having 1 x-ray scanner machine working at 0530 in the morning, it's not like there's a queue of 1000 people and a horde of travellers waiting now is it? You take your tea breaks and chill whilst the 'customers' get delayed...
  

• Heathrow airport Terminal 5 - security x-ray scanner policy is "all bags in the trays regardless", Terminal-2 policy is "no bags in trays regardless" - nothing like standards & consistency eh?
  

• Teenage tourists - for trying to carry their entire home hi-fi system & cabling in their carry-on baggage & trouser pockets - delaying the single queue by 10 mins
  

• Oh and Alitalia - any seat with a credit card slot in it should have an 18 cert, and be in a club with bar, and not be for in-flight TV! #EconomyFlightCutBacks

• Passengers taking 45mins to board a short-haul plane - so many bags and such slow attitude to travel & schedules

• People that walk up & down the plane for exercise, but really being nosey and bashing into you as they go (including pulling / supporting themselves on the back of the chair)

• People that recline their plane chairs - it's simple you recline your chair then please accept that my knees are going to be in your back and they're likely to move a fair bit
  

• Alitalia for not have apple juice - not everybody wants orange to drink, oh and cranberry would be nice as well?
  

• Alitalia for operating the hottest temperature flight I've ever been on - the AC seemed to be set to 'warm', mobile sauna would have been colder... People were getting seriously dehydrated during the flight and asking for many cups of water :(
  

I'm not as bad a traveller as the above makes me look - but given the costs and time I spend travelling it all matters. All I can say if thank goodness for my HTC Magic and 'The Levelers' 'levelling the land' at near full blast on repeat to get me through it all :)

Nice to be home after all of that...

Ian