Charles Apple

I just spent two wonderful days in Austin, Texas, teaching a couple of news design classes for the Traveling Workshop of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.

I’ll add some photos of the sessions to this post, but it’ll have to wait. My camera is in my suitcase, which is currently winging its way to Norfolk. I’m sitting in the bar of a tiny hotel by the airport in Austin.

I have no interest in the Oklahoma State/Missouri basketball game. Therefore, I’ll tell you how my day unfolded.

Thursday was a long, long day. By the time my sessions were over, I was beat. So afterward, I met fellow teacher Gus Gonzalez in the bar of the Crown Plaza hotel — a very nice place filled with very helpful folks.

We discussed where we could walk to for dinner. We finally decided to order something there and eat it at the bar. As a result, I ended up drinking a lot more than I normally would. When I got up this morning, I found I had forgotten to change my shirt before I went to bed. I slept in a long-sleeve dress shirt. I still had my pens in my pocket!

I also discovered I had awakened with a bit of a hangover. I haven’t had a hangover since 1988. Man, did I feel awful. I decided to pack my contact lenses into my suitcase and wear my glasses instead. I rarely do this in public.

My flight home wasn’t to leave until 3 p.m. I checked out of my room and went down to the hotel restaurant to grab a burger before boarding the shuttle van.

When I got downstairs, though, I discovered something interesting: The lobby was full of cheerleaders. There was a high school basketball tournament in town. There were oodles of girls, all decked out in their cheerleading outfits.

I would have been in heaven. If I were 30 years younger.

So I downed a burger and headed over to the airport. After checking my bag, I found I still had a couple of hours to burn before departure. Still feeling awfully groggy, I decided I’d eat again. So I had some Chinese food. I felt a little better after that. But still not great.

So I did all those important things in life — I tweeted, I marveled over yet another needless Facebook interface redesign — and I got ready to board.

Oh, the gate was a mess. So was the entire airport. Spring Break started today in Austin. Everyone was getting the hell out of town. Flights were packed. Southwest Air had apparently overbooked every flight.

Sure enough, just as they were about to load us up to Chicago’s Midway airport, they asked for volunteers to give up their seats and fly on Saturday instead. They were offering a rebooked Saturday flight, $200, a night’s stay in a hotel and an additional credit for a free flight.

Normally, I ignore these pleas. But for some reason, this one caught my ear. It occurred to me: I don’t necessarily have to get home tonight. In fact, I really didn’t feel like sitting in an aluminum tube for the rest of the afternoon. So what the hell? I went up to volunteer.

The guy who had so nicely pleaded for help pointed me to a customer service kiosk at another gate. I went over and got in line. The folks in front of me were seeking help with other problems with other flights. Meanwhile, my flight started boarding.

I don’t normally fly Southwest. One of the things about them I dislike: Their policy of no assigned seating. It’s first-come, first-served. Yet, I prefer a window seat. I can’t sleep unless I can put my head up against the bulkhead.

So as they kept calling off priority numbers and boarding my flight, I began to get nervous. What if I don’t get up to the counter in time? That won’t be a voluntary bump; that’s a missed flight. Then I’d be screwed.

So with a shrug, I abandoned the pursuit and jumped back into line for the Chicago flight. I was near the back of the line, though.

Sure enough, when I climbed aboard, I found the plane jammed. The overhead bins were stuffed. The seats were a mess. I moved to the back of the plane, expecting to find better seats.

I was wrong. Every seat there was taken. I moved back forward, looking for that one last seat. It had to be somewhere. Unless they allowed too many people to board. The flight attendants fanned out to help the search.

Finally, the attendant in the back found it. Very last row. The reason the seat had escaped detection: The guy sitting next to it was huge. The only way he got into his own seat was by pulling up the armrest and using half of the next seat over.

My seat.

The young lady sitting in the third seat, by the window, looked at us in terror. They weren’t really going to try to cram someone into the middle seat, were they? Only a small child would have fit there. In order to make that happen, they would have had to move multiple people or separate a mother from her kid. Not bloody likely.

You guys know me. I’m 6-foot-1 and just under 300 lbs.

But I fly a lot. I always fit into airline seats. I usually have no problem with Delta and United. Sometimes I have to ask for a seatbelt extension strap on Continental. My Northwest flights to and from the Philippines two years ago were grueling but comfortable.

This guy was huge. He just looked at me and shrugged. What could he say? I definitely sympathized with him.

The flight attendant said that clearly, we had a problem. He called for a ticketing supervisor. While we waited, I explained to the attendant why I was so late getting on board: I had tried to volunteer to fly the next day.

What happens if I volunteer again, I asked. Would Southwest make good on its offer?

Turns out, they would. I retrieved my briefcase and sportcoat and headed back up the jetway where a woman greeted me. I immediately recognized her: She was from the kiosk where I had stood in line.

She asked me to stand by for a few minutes. I sat down, called Sharon and watched my flight pull away from the gate.

After a half-hour or so, she was ready for me. She set up plans for me to fly though Houston Saturday morning. I’ll have a lengthy layover and get to Norfolk late tomorrow night.

She gave me a voucher for an additional flight. But no $200. And that was it. She disliked very much the fact that I had more questions for her.

First, I wanted my suitcase. She couldn’t give it to me — it was on its way to Chicago. OK, fine, I said. Instead of sending it on to Norfolk, can you turn it around at Midway and fly it back to Austin? Nope; it doesn’t work that way, she said. Why not? She wouldn’t say. What’s more, she acted as if I was out of line for expecting my luggage.

Don’t I get a hotel room? She seemed offended I expected one. Very grudgingly, she filled out a voucher for a night’s stay at a Quality Inn by the airport. She also gave me a voucher for a future flight.

But then she lowered the hammer on me. Right there in front of a line of surly passengers who were waiting for reticketing, she lectured me on how in the future, Southwest will require me to buy two seats.

Now looking back on it, this mistake was probably not her fault. She had been told that there was a problem because a passenger didn’t fit into a standard airline seat. And then I came off the plane. She must have assumed that I was the passenger who had the problem.

But hell, it wasn’t me. I was the guy who, basically, was sold only half a seat. After all, I had no trouble getting to Austin on Wednesday. I fit into those seats just fine.

But this final, public insult was just too much to bear. I am not a happy Southwest customer. Not a happy one indeed. My two Saturday flights had better be the smoothest, most relaxed flights in the history of air travel.

So here I sit in the Quality Inn.

The folks here are nice enough. It’s certainly no Crown Plaza, though. I went from five-star service to a place where… well, here’s the view outside my window:

Yep, that’s a trailer park.

Much to my surprise, the place has a restaurant. I ordered a ribeye that was cooked in what I’d call a homestyle way. Absolutely delicious.

The hotel has a sign out front warning pets are not allowed. This seems odd, given that there’s a cat lounging on a couch in the lobby. “She’s pregnant,” the woman at the front desk told me. The cat offered no comment.

My good friend Don Tate drove over in heavy Austin traffic to carry me to a JCPenney’s so I could visit their big-and-tall department and buy a pack of underwear and a fresh shirt.

I’ll get up tomorrow, use my complimentary toiletries and take the free shuttle back to the airport. I guess I’ll spend hours in Houston tomorrow. I hope the Chronicle prints another huge edition like it did on Wednesday. Nice stuff.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Amusing stuff, Charles Apple, Web news design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.