To these snobs who are too proud to fly economy because they won first-class tickets on JetBlue once, therefore they think they know what the apex of airline comfort is, I say, Southwest isn't the Wal-Mart of Airlines, it's the Target of airlines, similar experience but you don't feel ashamed afterwards, no Frontier Airlines is the Wal-Mart of airlines.
I had the unfortunate experience of having to fly from Phoenix to Nashville on Frontier, and then fly back from Nashville to Denver then back to Phoenix, also on Frontier. Which if you're counting, is three too many times one person should have to fly Frontier.
First, after going through security which is always the same how-it-feels-to-be-a-prisoner-in-an-American-jail-expect-the-only-one-who's-going-to-be-in-your-butthole-is-the-guards experience no matter which airline you can afford to fly. This was the year before they started that TSA prescreening bullshit that I never qualify for. My guess is that since I've been out of the country thrice when I was two, four, and eight, I was deemed a possible threat, so hooray for all the Americans who have never experienced life outside our borders you must be so goddamn cultured, or they're going alphabetically and haven't gotten to the W's yet. In that case it's understandable.
Anyway, secondly I saw the plane, plane white, with a green tail with a big stock photo of an animal on it. You see Qantas has Kangaroos (I learned this when I was four while being trained as a sleeper agent for the Australian government, just in case they ever need to stage a coup d'état), Southwest has one Shamu plane, American Airlines has an eagle unfolding the French flag, and Frontier has whatever animal you can think of that lives in the exotic mid-west of the United States. So the craziest animal you'll get to see on a plane is a bobcat or a mountain lion. The saddest part is that the animals are staring directly straight forward and look incredibly miserable to be on the plane. For they know that their image is being used to entice people to fly on the worst think ever build to fly and without any royalties for the use of their image.
You see one of the big selling points of Frontier is that you pay for how much leg room you want, and luckily my parents, who decided to pay to put my sister and I on a flying bus that deifies the will of God via being powered by four constant explosions, put some extra cash in and got use the deluxe, economy, seating package, bullshit, thing. Which translated to my knees pushing against my lungs, as suppose to my knees replacing my lungs. For even though the average height of an American male is 6ft 1 inch, which is what I am, most things are still designed for those 5ft 6 inches tall, which I would like to point out is an inch shorter than the average American female.
I'm guessing those who never had that gross-spurt in high school that they were promised now run the transportation industry and want to get back at all of us who drank our milk as kids.
Just looked it up, the head of the TSA is about 5 foot 11 inches. He's just trying to get back at us for the lack of those two inches. (In his pants)
Anyway, learning to breath without the use of my diaphragm, the safety seminar started, and since I've heard this for seemingly my whole life to the point where I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat screaming "Please remain seated while the fasten your seat belt sign is lit!".
Which is one of the many, many reasons why I'm single, and why none of my friends or family want to share a hotel room with me. Or really be around me in general.
One of the many, many, many reasons.
So during the safety seminars which used to be called the "shut up and listen you pricks" talk back in 90's (things were different under Clinton, much more extreme and jazzy), I read the little laminated tri-folds in the back of the seats to see how much of what is being said is word-for-word what's in the book, thinking that it would save us a lot of time if we were just told to read the damn tri-fold, so whoever dies, died of laziness or illiteracy, ether way helps the species.
If they're really spot on with the wording and order of topics, I imagine an airline stewardship test, with all this stewards and stewardesses sitting in a DMV type building, desperately cramming last minute reading the tri-fold before their number is called. This normally leads through a long chain of unconnected thoughts until I get to the humorous image of a stewardess giving this speech to George W. Bush in his Air Force One bedroom like in Transformers, and he just lays back and when she's done he just says "Yeah I'll have some of those Ho-Ho's".
By the time my small dip into depression is over, caused by my realization that I remember a throw away joke about a guy who isn't even President any more in a movie that no one really remembers anyway other than Megan Fox's ass which is said to be only 17, which I don't remember and just have to take everyone else's word for it, the airplane is now in motion.
But first we were treated to a sound that sounded like a car failing to start. You know that hollow start-up sound as the crank shaft just spins a little bit without an engine ignition. Expect I was on a plane and not a 2007 Ford Focus. So the sound is a little concerning, but luckily a stewardess told everyone that the noise is perfectly normal.
Yeah planes still shouldn't sound like a car that's out of gas, they should sound like, you know, a plane.
Then I realized something, and I pulled out the tri-fold once again, and I confirmed my suspicion, we're flying in an Airbus.
You see Airbus is a European aircraft manufacturing company, and is widely considered to be the biggest international rival to Boeing an American aircraft company.
But you see unlike cars, Americans build planes better than anyone, so much like torque, don't buy imports.
I can prove this too you, because when you think Boeing, you think of a massive 747 carrying almost 500 people across the globe, when you think Airbus, you think of a plane that sounds like a car failing to start.
And as you know, your opinion based off of anecdotes that you may or may not have even been a part off, is always correct.
Realizing I'm now flying in a coffin made by some guy who fled from East Germany back in the 80's and has no real manufacturing skills (the Soviet Bloc build the Berlin Wall, and you can see how long that lasted), I started to pray to all of deities I could think of just to cover all the bases.
Then I realized that there's a little TV in front of me, and for six bucks, I could get cable for 3 hours.
Which I paid for, and then realized that this is cable TV in the early 2000-teens, and not the cable TV back in the good-ol late 90's early 2000's, I wasted six bucks.
We survived the trip to Nashville, and flew back weeks later while stopping at Denver.
And it was Denver, that I discovered that Frontier Airlines isn't what it is all cracked up to be, my boarding pass didn't have a gate number on it. Which is a problem when you really want to go home as fast as possible because flying Frontier is like going in for kidney stone treatment, you just have to get it over with.
So I found my way to the Frontier Customer Service desk, which I had to Google what gate it was located by, and in a twist of fate was actually the gate that the plane going to Phoenix was supposed to land at, and the line was out towards airlines that people actually wanted to fly on. I waited in line for about an hour, which only left me about five minutes to catch the plane that was suppose to be 30 feet away from me. Then right as I'm about to step up to the counter, a lady steps aside from behind it and says
"Who's all trying to get to Phoenix"
And everyone expect five people raised their hands, she then realized that she had to address the entire flight manifest of a fully booked flight, which is weird considering the plane that she knew wasn't there, wasn't there, and all the people who are suppose to be on the plane, are not on the plane.
So as she then threw a little personal hissy fit with herself for volunteering to talk to the customers who her company stranded in Denver, Colorado. (This was before the weed legalization if you need a reference) She finally told us that the plane isn't here.
Then a man, who is forever known as the personal hero of all the people on that flight to Phoenix said
"Oh really?"
The crowd cheered, and the lady, who I should mentioned walked into this situation thinking she'd be having an intimate conversation with like eight people, who weren't in desperate need to get home that day, didn't really seem to grasp the sarcasm and answered with
"Yes sir the plane which is suppose to be here, isn't here"
Like she was talking to a three-year-old about why Scrappy had to go to a farm upstate.
The crowd started on its angry incline towards angry mob, when we realized that the lady didn't answer the sarcasm with a condescending remark, she truly meant to talk to a middle aged man, who is with his wife and kids, like a small confused child. Which is not how one should talk to a crowd of angry Arizonians, for if there's two things that pulls us together as a state, we hate someone in authority trying to explain something to us, and the fact that we are always trying to get to Phoenix.
She then went on to explain that the plane in question had broken down during take off in Florida, which I should point out is like a five hour flight from Denver, so it's not like they had fair warning, and that a plane is flying with a spare part from California, which meant that we'd be stuck for about 12 hours.
This then almost caused a riot, but the lady caught us right before the uproar with
"But there's a plane leaving Mexico soon that has been redirected here, so you can fly out as soon as one of the two planes has landed and is refueled"
Our elected leader then asked,
"and how long will that take"
And the lady replied
"It will be here between 6 and 8pm"
Oh I forgot to mention, it's about 8am right now, so to put this in perspective we've been told that ether a plane has to fly across the country form one state ending in "ia" to another state ending in "ia" with a part to fix a plane that will then fly 3/4 of the way back will take 12 hours to do, versus our other option which is a plane in Mexico leaving at some point and flying North which will take about 10 or 12 hours.
So really the good news is, we now have a range for how long we get to spend stuck in Denver.
Now as we then started crafting spears and torches, the lady did tell us that other options may become available in the mean time, and that we may leave sooner than that. Our fair leader asked,
"So will you sent out an intercom telling us that a plane has arrived"
the lady replied
"No we're too busy here", gesturing to the now last person of the five people in line not trying to get back to Phoenix, as he walks away,
"You'll have to check back every half hour or so"
Our king then said "So you're telling us that we have to check back here, every half hour, for possibly the next twelve hours, or we don't get to go home"
The lady stared at him blankly, we all hoped that with his kind, wise words, our god-king as shown this woman the error of her ways and now she see that we are in fact human like her, but instead we found out that she was confused as to why he asked such a stupid question with her reply,
"Yes that's exactly what I'm saying"
She then walked off, done with us peasants, now that I think about it, she probably flies JetBlue.
As we lit the torches, she turned to us one last time and said,
"oh and the partnership most airlines have with most other airlines that allow you to fly on their flights with another airlines ticket if the original flight has been canceled, Frontier has no such partnership, though you are available to buy Southwest tickets at the entrance of the airport, also we cannot refund your tickets here, though if you call the number on our website we can terminate your ticket and then mail you a refund check within the next two weeks"
She literally told us to go suck a fat one and fly Southwest.
So I was stuck in Denver for possibly 10-12 hours, though I had to check every half-hour to make sure that was the case. And this was Denver in the summer, so a freezing 81 degrees with air-conditioing made me pull out my new jacket I had just stolen from my gay uncle's closest thinking it'll help me pick up chicks.
As it turns out the jacket only makes me attractive to homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual men. It actually seems like it makes girls hate me more, which I think is because they're jealous of their boyfriends hitting on me.
I walked around, looking like I have a severe skin condition, but in reality I think anything with moving cold air below 95 degrees is freezing, since that's like mid-Decemeber temperatures in Phoenix, which is where I was trying to go.
I sat, took a bunch of selfies of myself in my new jacket and texted them to all my female friends, and then cried when I got a bunch of selfies back of them flipping me off. Which is normal for when I text them, it just hurts the same every time.
Finally at 8:30pm a plane with a deer on the tail finally showed up.
We got on the plane, I learned to breath without my diaphragm again, and I cried about the Bush years once again.
We then had to sit on the runway so that the plane from Mexico could land, yes this was the broken plane from Florida and not the closer plane from Mexico, it actually delayed us more.
Finally the crank shaft turned again, I cursed the Nazis under my breath, and finally we were on our way back to Phoenix.
When we landed our beloved leader who stood up to the evils of customer service and brought us to the promised land after traveling for three long hours, made a speech, or at least he did in this imaginary part of this true story, and graciously handed his power over to us, his loyal subjects, and told us that we are now free to chose our own lives, and we all made a promise then never to fly Frontier again.
For the Roman senate elected one of their own to carry ultimate power in times of need, he then returned the power graciously when the time of crisis has been resolved.
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