St. Louis Airport Delays – If You Arrive 3 Hours Early to The Airport and Don't Make it Through Security in Time for Your Flight, You Should Get to Fight Somebody
The worst, most frustrating thing about incompetent, understaffed airports is that they truly have zero reason to try and be better. "Oh, I'm sorry. You arrived at 1pm for your 4pm flight, but the security moved to slow? I'm devastated to hear that. That's why we recommend you always get to your flight in plenty of time to allow for any 50,000 person Seventh Day Adventist conference delays. If you have a complaint with the airport, feel free to file it on our website, and we'll be sure pass along to TSA Security for them to use as toilet paper during their hour long bathroom breaks as you wait in line on the shoulder of the interstate. Oh, you're still fucking livid? I'm sorry to hear that. I guess you'll just have to use the other airport next time. You stupid bitch."
You always see those videos of people losing their minds on gate agents at the airport and think, "Who would possibly behave that way in a public setting?"
In reality, those people might be heroes. They're fighting the good fight, even if it means spending a night in the city jail. I know they're just berating low-level employees who don't have the slightest influence on anything that happens. But for the mental health of the rest of the passengers who are being equally fucked over, and are gritting their teeth trying to keep their shit together, they need to see someone being read the riot act. After watching a full-blown airport freakout go down, it probably makes the other angry passengers take a step back and realize, "Ok... don't be that guy... it's not that important."
But somebody has to do it. For the good of society, somebody has to make that minimum wage employee's life hell for a few minutes. And you never know, if they lose their shit hard enough, maybe they'll go viral, and the video will make it across the desk of the Southwest Airlines CEO. Robert E. Jordan could watch the clip and think to himself, "You know what? We have been bad lately. We're going to spend more money on our staff, and be more generous with passenger refunds."
Lmao just kidding. That's insane. But when you're getting fucked over by an airport that bad, somebody simply has to be hollered at by a mentally unstable man at the end of his vacation.
I hate to advocate for violence on a Monday evening, but if you arrive to the airport three hours ahead of time, and wind up out $12,000 on a non-refundable ticket, you deserve some sort of retribution. If that retribution isn't going to come monetarily, the only solution I can come up with is one-free pass to publicly fist fight a person of your choice. And I think it's only fair that you're given a weapon (but not your opponent).
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Although in this case, I'm not exactly sure who most deserves a fisting. This one isn't really Southwest Airlines fault. My first thought was you have to fight an airport employee. Maybe an employee who called off work that day, which caused the security line run slow. Maybe the person in charge of scheduling who didn't account for the number of adventists leaving St. Louis that day. Or maybe the biggest asshole in TSA who's general unpleasantness is the reason so many agents abruptly quit, which constantly leaves St. Louis Lambert Airport understaffed.
But seeing how many people appear to have arrived at the airport at once, I'm thinking this might be less the airports fault, and more the fault of every Seventh Day Adventist on earth trying to leave St. Louis at exact same time. In this case, you might have to fight a pastor. Honestly, you might have to take this one up with God. You might have to fight God.
Did the entire conference decide to show up to the airport 24 hours before their scheduled flights? I feel like the airport wouldn't schedule that many flights at the same time if they couldn't come close to dealing with that many passengers. If everyone showed up 2 hours early, I gotta think the airport would have been able to handle it. That would be some cheap bullshit a church would pull. To all leave the conference together on their free shuttles, or 8-way split Uber XL's despite their flights not being for another 10 hours.
I don't know if that's what happened here, but I had an employer in the past who pulled something like that. You check out of your hotel in the morning, so you bring your bags with you to the final event of the conference. When you scheduled your flights, they recommended you don't book anything before 6pm. Just to be safe. Because they aren't exactly sure when everything will wrap up. But by the last day, the people running the conference are out things to talk about. On top of that, a handful of people didn't heed their advice and booked early afternoon flights. So to accommodate them, they make a point to zip through the final day and have everyone out the door by 10:30am. At that point, even though your flight is at 7:15pm, you don't have anywhere else to go. Everyone is grabbing Ubers together. You have your bags with you, so you don't really want to lug those around the city all afternoon. So you just say fuck it and head to the airport early where you end up spending triple the money on $15 drinks than you would have spent had you'd just gone to a bar for a few hours and paid for a solo cab.
Maybe that's an ultra specific example, but I feel like in situations with a large group like that, people end up going to the airport together, even if their flights are super spread out.
There should really be a rule where if you can prove you arrived at the airport more than 2 hours before take-off, and still miss your flight, the airport has to pay for your ticket. In cash. Right there on the spot. It's crazy to think you'd have to get there any earlier. Maybe that would actually hold shitty airports the slightest bit accountable, if they took even the slightest bit of a financial hit when they underperform. Or in this case… that $12,000 might be on the Seventh Day Adventists. "Sorry folks, but today's offerings will go to Dale Herbert of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who missed his flight last weekend due to God."