I remember a time when you bought something and got a receipt for it. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Now, when you buy something, you are given a very thin scroll copy of the Declaration of Independence. The big receipts used to only come from trips to the grocery store, especially if you broke the cardinal rule of going shopping when you're hungry. Basically, the length of the receipt was proportional to the number of items purchased. After all, that would only be logical, right? Now, I don't know when this phenomenon began, but it's getting out of hand. Holy crap! I bought one item from Home Depot the other day. ONE ITEM. My John Holmesian receipt was 27" in length!!! What happened to the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" bandwagon that everyone was on? I made a trip to the grocery store, and bought a fair amount of stuff. That receipt was 32" in length. While I find that too long as well, what in the holy crap do I need 27" of receipt for on a single item purchase!? It wasn't even a large item!!! Sheesh...
Anyways... I started keeping track of things that passengers say when stepping off an aircraft after a flight. I kept track of both things I heard when commuting on mainline flights as well as those said to me or the crew I was flying with. While the results were quite varied, there were certainly a few common threads.
On the good side, statements like, "Thanks," "Thank you," "Nice flight," and "Good job," were the most common. Recently, I've noticed comments with the word "safe" in them, specifically on poor weather days. (I noticed these comments being much more common in the wake of the Colgan crash in Buffalo.) "Thanks for getting us here safely," and "Thanks for the safe flight," have been quite common. One guy even said, "Thanks for keeping us away from those thunderstorms!" Another fairly common weather related comment is some version of, "Holy crap it's hot here!" or "Holy crap it's cold here!"
Then, there were some more specific comments such as, "That was a smooth flight!" "Thanks, you cured my fear of flying!" "I love these planes!" "Is this plane nice to fly? It's nice to ride in!" "Nice landing!" "I've been on subway cars that had rougher landings!" Those always help to inflate the infamous pilot ego.
Of course, then there's not-so-fun things to hear. "I hate these damn little planes." "Can you guys get anywhere on time?" "I've been on 3 flights today and all of them have been hard landings. Is it the planes that land this way? What gives?" "Man, that was rough! You flew in the Navy, didn't you?"
While I'm sitting here in the terminal waiting for my commute flight to work, one lady approached a gate podium with her standby ticket. I wasn't paying much attention to the conversation between her and the gate agent at first. However, the things she said grabbed my ear. It became apparent as the gate agent was asking her some basic questions so that he could help her, that she had no clue. I mean, really. Not a clue in the world. He asked her, "What flight were you booked on, ma'am?" Her reply was "Oh, I don't know. Northwest is all I know." Wow. Turns out, she just bought a ticket and showed up first thing in the morning. Her flight wasn't for SEVERAL hours. But, she did not understand she had bought a seat on a specific flight. She wasn't even at the correct gate for her destination. I guess she just figured the ticket was good for today, and she could just up, and find "the" gate with Northwest on it. To me, this is shocking. However, it just goes to show that every single day, there are people on airline flights that don't fly very often at all, if ever before. I think it's important for us of all to keep this in mind. We do this day in and day out. So, it's very easy to forget how confused, unfamiliar and lost some of our customers feel.
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