SECT Of The Trampoline People

It baffles me why airlines are in business at all.

United especially. Granted it’s nearly impossible to run anything that caters to the American public without basically assuming that everybody is from Alabama and some kind of slack-jawed hillbilly. That still doesn’t excuse basic process stupidity like this:

New: TSA Secure Flight program
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Secure Flight program requires airlines to collect Secure Flight information from all passengers prior to travel. Please be sure to provide this information at least 72 hours prior to scheduled departure. Learn more

You get this email as part of your confirmation on your ticket. Basically it says “Hey buddy, you need to give us more information or else the minimum wage downs syndrome skin sack in charge of your security is going to give you flack at the airport.” Nobody wants that. The TSA is already the largest bunch of rude, pissed off, underpaid, retards to ever be found under a rock. Giving them an actual honest to God reason to be upset with you is like throwing a sack of angry cats in to a box full of angry cats and then lowering a baby in to it.

Ok hold on I just had a rad idea. Be right back.

Well that didn’t turn out like I had planned, there is baby all over the garage and those stains don’t come out!

Anyway, I clicked to “learn more” and was presented with a page that says:

Under the new Secure Flight Rule, the TSA mandates that air carriers request specific information from passengers who are booking travel. The required information is known as Secure Flight Passenger Data (SFPD).

So… I got an email telling me I need to provide information in order to travel. But wait, I clicked to learn more and was told by United that THEY are required to collect it. So in order to travel, they have to get information from me, but they didn’t ask for it.

This makes sense. I figure it’s another stupid corporate fuck up and I’ll just go find the phone number they have set up. I mean obviously if you are going to tell EVERY customer that they need to give you information, you would set up a phone number for them to do that.

Twenty minutes later I found an 800 number on their website for new reservations. Out of options I decided to call that. The voice prompt says nothing about providing them information, to be clear, providing them the information they REQUIRE from you. In fact the voice prompt just says “Make your selection from the following, new reservations, baggage, customer relations, flight status.”

Then it goes silent. I waited for it to tell me how I was to make that selection. It didn’t say I was to speak my choice, or press a button, or use a semaphore flag. So I silently waited, as I am always happy to follow directions.

Twenty minutes later I had found myself talking to somebody in lost baggage, then to a recording in Customer Relations. I hung up and did what every red blooded American does when confronted with a structured system designed to get rid of you: I spammed 0 until I was connected to an operator.

She informed me that she is the person I need to provide the TSA information to. I offered it to her: My middle name, and date of birth.

That’s it?! Nearly an hour of work so they could get something that would be TWO extra fields on the website I already bought my ticket on.

I only fly because walking to New York would take too long. I’m starting to give it some serious consideration though. Next time an airline is going out of business because people are voting with their wallets and taking their money someplace else, let’s all wish upon a star that our government doesn’t bail them out. We all stopped buying their garbage FOR A REASON and because I don’t want to support them anymore is not a compelling reason for the government to give them my tax money.

Spend it on bullets for wars and government enforcement of non-sustainable farming and land rape instead. As long as it isn’t going to education or the arts, and it should never go in to a dead end like the FDA to keep my food safe. I wouldn’t be able to live without United airlines, but food and water is something I am fine without.