Weekend Field Report

Quick observations from some recent travels

I was back on the road this weekend and into yesterday. Like any trip, there was good, bad, and in-between. Here are a few things that stood out (in no particular order).

Starlink Glazing Gone Wrong

It was only last Friday when I was singing the praises of the Starlink wifi service on United.

Oops.

I kept trying . . .

I was obviously disappointed as I have had excellent experiences with Starlink to date. However, I was more disappointed that the crew was still making announcements about the “fast, free wifi available on this flight.”¹ At this point, announcements about the wifi being up or down are almost as important as the service itself.

I have not heard any industry chatter² about reliability issues with Starlink, but it is only available at scale on United’s regional fleet. If issues were to start occurring on 9 AM mainline departures from LaGuardia to O’Hare, we’d definitely hear all about it.

Don’t Do This!

Come on people.

Be sure to squeeze your dirty shoe between the IFE screen and the sidewall for maximum effect.

You would never go to someone’s house and put your foot up on their wall (or anywhere) like this. I’m not sure why people feel it’s OK on a plane.³

The crew doesn’t like it.

I don’t like it.

However, my friends at Schneller, the industry’s leading supplier of floor and wall coverings, LOVE IT. Keep shortening that replacement cycle, buddy.

O’Hare Transit Trivialities

I have avoided changing planes at ORD recently in favor of the superior DEN. However, circumstances required a change in Chicago. When it’s said and done, ORD might be my single most traveled-through airport. Therefore, I have a lot of very specific and potentially tedious thoughts about things every time I’m there. Allow me to share!

1. The infamous tunnel connecting Concourses B and C has always had my vote for most iconic airport transitory environment.⁴ However, you can count on at least one of the 8 travelators aka “moving walkways” being down. This weekend it was two. That being said, I never want a single thing changed down there. I am firmly anti-progress on this front.

2. I am surprised that United and the Chicago airport authorities have not done more to address the perpetual bottlenecks in Concourse B near the hallway to Terminal 2. A serious choke point occurs when there’s a line at Starbucks⁵ near Gate B6, and then there’s another mass of humanity where the TSA lines spit out directly into foot traffic near Gate B7. Sometimes it’s so bad, I have to duck into the nearby Johnson and Murphy location for safety.

Just. Trying. To get. To Jamba Juice.

3. I don’t know if there’s a bleaker airport than ORD in the winter. No further notes.

Fifty shades of gray, ORD style.

Notes

1. I’ll give them a slight pass as this was a very early departure — slight pass

2. My friend Seth Miller is always on top of industry wifi developments at his excellent aviation news site PaxEx.Aero

3. Unfortunately, there’s a whole litany of things that people do on planes that they wouldn’t do elsewhere — there’s definitely a post coming on that in the future

4. As much as I love this tunnel, I was shamefully unaware that the installation had a name: “Sky’s the Limit,” by artist Michael Hayden

5. There is never NOT a line at this Starbucks — it’s metaphysical certitude