Air travel today: Not so free to move about the country
AIRLINES 'RUDE' | Cost, hassles lead woman to vow of never flying another commercial plane
Chris Chojnicki was always one flight from a family fix. She would think nothing of flying to Chicago and Atlanta and California four or five times a year to see her aunts and cousins for reunions and graduations and birthday parties.
But now, the Pittsburgh woman vows never to board another commercial airplane because of the expense and the sheer hassle of flying.
As much as she misses her relatives, she can't stand flying anymore.
"You are forced to take off your shoes and walk on a filthy floor ... This is the kicker, where you are sitting on the tarmac with no air-conditioning and you have to go to the bathroom, and they won't even let you take off your seat belt and go to the bathroom. I cannot begin to tell you how rude the airlines are," she said.
Chojnicki's decision to clip her wings and forgo family reunions might be an extreme reaction, but many people are weighing how many times a year to visit a grandchild or a sister or a mother.
For years, the American family, often separated by the wide-open spaces of big country, stayed together via the cheap weekend flight.
But soaring jet-fuel prices are changing the carefree nature of air travel and the very nature of family get-togethers.
"The very young and the very old are perhaps the first to be affected," said Emily L. Stevick, a clinical psychologist in Mount Lebanon, Pa. "But the grieving relatives who cannot afford, for example, to get from Pittsburgh to Denver when a grandson dies suddenly, or the celebrating aunts and uncles for whom the time, the trials and the money to attend a wedding in Portland are now out of reach."
And it's unlikely that the aggravations of flying -- rising fares, canceled flights, stranded passengers, add-on fees, even the elimination of in-flight movies on some US Airways flights -- will go away anytime soon with the airlines struggling under the weight of record fuel prices, said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare, a consumer airfare research Web site.
"If anything, it is going to get worse," he said.
The last-minute flight to Phoenix, Ariz., or Tampa, Fla., for a brother's surprise birthday party is suddenly expensive.
"People got really spoiled in the last five to 10 years," Seaney said. "They could wait for the last minute and really get a good deal. Now they find out, instead of $250, the ticket is $800."
At the quilting table of Life-span Hillsdale Senior Center in Dormont, Pa., Mildred Corrigan, a 77-year-old who is rarely at home and always on the go, is daunted by flying alone.
"It's not knowing what to do -- taking my shoes off. I brought a bottle of water because I need water for my pills. I am not sure if you are going to be charged for a bag. All that crazy stuff. Before, you just flew. I am afraid I am going to get too confused."
Barrie Haynes, the 73-year-old senior companion coordinator for the Dormont senior center, knows a lot of people her age who won't fly alone. Above the murmur of a bingo game, Haynes discussed the travails of flying alone to see her children and grandchildren in California and Australia.
She has always loved to fly, soaring through the clouds and feeling the world get larger. But on her recent flight to California to visit her daughter, she felt as if she was compressed into a foxhole.
"I swear, they shrank the plane," she said.
She is debating whether to fly to visit family in Australia, a long trip that she has postponed until 2009. "I keep putting things off. But at my age, I want to see my family now."
So does Mary Evers, 52, who lives in Wexford, Pa., and does not visit her elderly parents in Florida as often because she can no longer find inexpensive flights to Tampa.
She also worries her parents' traveling days are numbered because of the rigors of flying.
"Every time they have flown up, there has been some change in regulations. This time, they paid extra for bags."
And they can no longer do curbside checking without paying a fee. They can't lift their bags into the overhead compartments. "It wears them out. They worry about missing their flight, long layovers."
"My mother said she would do it anyway. But it gets harder as you get older. ... I envy those people who live close to their family."
Scripps Howard News Service