Last week, we boarded a flight to Florida to spend the holiday with my family. A "no frills" flight.
Hmm. "No frills". What could that mean? Let's see. On "regular" flights, you are jammed in like sardines with no elbow, leg, head, butt or carry-on room, and if the person in front of you reclines their seat, you can kiss your breathing room good-bye as well. Who needs eHarmony to meet that special someone when you can just purchase a coach ticket?
There is no food unless you count those box meals that, based on the freshness of the contents, I'm pretty sure were packaged sometime in the seventies. Oh, and let's not forget the one nasty little bathroom for all two hundred plus economy passengers which, since you can't stand and block the four-inch wide aisle, you have to keep hopping up like a jack-in-the-box and trying to beat everyone else with with a small bladder to the back of the plane every time the door opens. Great. Red-light, green-light at thirty-five thousand feet.
Of course, all of this is made bearable by the sub-arctic temperature at which they keep the cabin. Since there are rarely enough, if any, blankets, I've resigned myself to wearing a parka in July or looking like a smurf.
So which "frills" were we giving up? Seats? Pilots? God forbid, bathrooms???
Nope. Luggage. First up, they hit you with an extra charge per bag at check-in for the "luxury" of taking anything more than what you are actually wearing. Then, since a conveyor belt is a "frill", you have to take your luggage over to a designated area and load it onto a cart that may or may not be headed for the cargo hold. Welcome to Hooterville.
Tickets. They don't have them. The "boarding pass" is a register receipt, the thickness of tissue paper, stapled to a flyer of some kind. Okay.
The gate. No fancy-schmancy electronic sign announcing the flight. No non-fancy-schmancy wooden sign. No sign at all. Late? On time? Who knows? At least we knew we were at the right gate because the woman who had given us our boarding passes showed up to work the gate (which meant she ripped your receipt in half...no wasteful ticket machines here! All that technology stuff is overrated anyway.)
When it came time to make the boarding announcements...you guessed it. She yelled, "Zone One boarding". (Well, okay, they did have a P.A. system--kind of--but Betty Jo, or was it Billy Jo, actually did yell. I swear.)
Boarding the plane, I was relieved to see that they had seats. I did, however, keep a close eye on the cockpit, because if Bobby Jo took the pilot's seat, I was outta there! Fortunately, she did not, but only because she probably had to go load the luggage on, then refuel us before heading off to perform maintenance on their other plane.
Water? Soda? Five dollars, please. I didn't dare purchase any because I was afraid I would have to use the bathroom and I didn't know if it was a flat fee or if they charged by the minute.
And thank goodness we were travelling during the day, so I didn't incur any extra charges for turning on the overhead light.
Despite their Mr. Haneyesque (oh, you wanted oxygen in the cabin? Five dollars please) approach to flying though, I was pleasantly surprised to find that we took off and landed on time. I am, however, going to be looking closely at my credit card statement to find out exactly how much the frill of braking and coming to a complete stop before disembarking cost before booking with them again.
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