Why I Don't Fly

With all due respect to my son, the airline pilot, I have pretty much decided not to fly commercial anymore. It's just not worth the hassle.
Case in point: Our youngest son left New York this morning, via United Airlines, on his way to Seattle, with a plane change in Chicago. He had a 55 minute layover between his arriving and departing flights at O'Hare. That seemed reasonable. The first leg of his flight was interrupted however when the airplane made an unscheduled landing at Grand Rapids, Michigan because someone on board was sick. If you draw a straight line from Grand Rapids to Chicago, it looks to me like it would have taken perhaps 15 minutes longer for the flight to continue on to Chicago, but no. I assume someone must have had chest pains. Is there any other reason that a pilot would be compelled to delay 149 people so that one person could be spared another 15 minutes of flight time? By the way, aren't flight attendants supposed to be trained on defibrillators? Anyway, the stop in Grand Rapids delayed his arrival to ORD by, can you guess?.. 55 minutes! BUT when he got to his departure gate at ORD, the aircraft was still there! Unfortunately, they had already closed the door and refused to let him board. He, and several others, were rebooked on a flight departing ORD two hours later so he sat down in front of a window facing the original flight he was supposed to be on and watched, and watched, and waited and waited. The aircraft sat at the gate for AN HOUR before pushing back. With that extra hour at the gate, they should have kicked off the standbys who took our son's and other's seat and let him and the others on. But it gets worse.
His rescheduled flight was delayed even more than the original! It didn't leave until an hour and twenty minutes after it's scheduled departure time. Why? Because one of the flight attendants was reassigned to another flight at the last minute and they had to wait for a replacement. Give me a break, United!
He finally arrived in Seattle 4 hours late. But that's still not all.
After landing in Seattle, he had planned to rent a car and drive 5 hours to Pasco to visit friends. Unfortunately, the drive to Pasco crosses the Cascade Mountains which, by that time, were under a heavy snow warning. I managed to convince him to fly over to Pasco via Alaska Airlines instead.
There was a flight scheduled to depart Seattle for Pasco two hours later. He got a ticket, checked his luggage, and went to the gate. Fifteen minutes before scheduled departure time, the gate agent announced that boarding would be delayed "about 10 minutes" while they replaced a light bulb. TWO HOURS LATER, he was still waiting in Seattle. He got on the standby list for a later flight and finally arrived in Pasco two hours later than expected. His luggage is still sitting on the original flight, of course, but we hope it will catch up with him sometime tomorrow.
Six hours of delays! To me that's not acceptable. I refuse to participate as long as the passengers are the only ones required to play by the rules.
So, to United and Alaska Airlines I'd like to send this holiday message: BITE ME!