Airlines have a long way to travel when it comes to service

I’m not really a fan of flying. It’s not that I get claustrophobic or airsick. It’s that I am reluctant to entrust my fate to an airline company teetering on the brink of bankruptcy who just forced all of its employees to take a 30 percent cut in wages.

My last flying experience did little to assuage my aversion. The 26-hour long journey from St. Petersburg to Des Moines began auspiciously enough with a short flight to Paris on which I was served a completely edible breakfast.

Charles de Gaulle airport was an entirely different matter. Although my luggage was tagged “Short Connection,” I myself had no special designation, and it required the full hour of my layover to get from the terminal to the bus and to the departing terminal. At the end of the departing terminal was not a plane, but yet another bus, on which the passengers were herded on like cattle.

I suppose the bus ride should have been pleasant because its circuitous path took us around every side of the newly remodeled airport at least once and under it several times, but I began to have a vague fear that the bus was never going to arrive at the plane — like the Jewish factory workers in “Schindler’s List,” who, instead of being transported to Schindler’s factory, mistakenly ended up at Autschwitz.

This fear was only given credence when the bus stopped in the middle of a field several miles away from the airport, and the doors were opened, not to let the passengers out, but to provide ventilation. I was relieved to observe that my plane was actually present in the field; however, we were asked to remain standing on the bus for another 20 minutes while a mechanical problem was being fixed.

I had grown tired of the yuppie-ish banter of the two American businessmen standing next to me who had spent the 20-minute bus ride complaining about the price of a first-class upgrade, poor airport Internet services and their own cumbersome wireless communication devices, so I convinced my own traveling companions to play a game. The time passed quickly as we amused ourselves with “Guess what age I feel inside,” “Guess how many poppies I count outside the window” and “Guess what movie this facial expression is from.”

After finally boarding the plane, the passengers were greeted by the pilot’s voice, which sounded uncannily similar to that of Inspector Clouseau, the half-witted French detective of the Pink Panther movies. The next amusement came from the safety video, in which two smiling flight attendants demonstrated emergency procedures in English, French and sign language.

Apparently, the sign language equivalent for overhead compartments looks like a bad early-90s dance move. When the flight attendants signed “if the airplane crashes into the ocean…” with big, toothy grins on their faces, I couldn’t help breaking out into fits of laughter.

The plane touched down in Atlanta, “the busiest airport in the world”— as if that’s something to brag about. After a five-hour layover, extended to six because of another mechanical problem, I boarded the plane for Des Moines. Just before I drifted off into sleep, I heard one hysterical passenger peppering the flight attendant with questions about the plane’s safety because she had been asked for the weights of her two pre-teen daughters.

The pilot announced over the PA that there was nothing to worry about; we would take off as soon as they removed 10 pounds of fuel from the plane because apparently there was way too much. Comforting.

Everyone who has taken several flights has experienced similar frustrations.

It is a sign that the airline industry has a long way to go when a flight leaving on time is a wholly unexpected occurrence, and receiving one’s baggage undamaged and in a timely manner is still a delightful surprise. One detail they have mastered completely, though, is smiling — even when they are showing you how to use your seat as a flotation device.