03.28.06
The mess of LAX
3/23/06 2:59 PM, Los Angeles Airport
After the neat and efficient organization of Hong Kong LAX is a total mess. I have shown my passport to and been looked at suspiciously by six to eight people, only two of which seemed to have any actual purpose (the immigration check and the check in counter). When you arrive from overseas in the USA you have to collect your bags and then check them back in, in case customs wants to make sure you are not smuggling anything (one assumes). Trying to make my connecting flight I received no less than four different answers on where I should take my bags, the last of which assured me that even though they were ‘checked through to Portland’ they would never had made it there had I not ended up at the Alaska Airlines check in counter. At this counter by the way I arrived (in a huge hurry because my connecting flight was an hour and a half late) first in line but waited twenty minutes to be attended (this while people who had just gotten there got attended to in a much shorter period of time). Then there were two local homeboys who skipped to the front of the security lines and when questioned by another flier just replied ‘hey I work here’ with total attitude. All in all, far from clear, not efficient and not at all friendly. Our flight from Hong Kong by the way was delayed in takeoff by an hour because they could not find a passenger who was supposed to be on-board. I have to wonder about the logic of messing up the connecting flights of a few hundred people because one person is not making it to the gate. I fortunately had a good amount of time to make my connection (which by the way is delayed, we were supposed to have started boarding by now) but I overheard a few people who had missed their flights and were trying to figure out other ways to get to wherever they were going. All in all I think I am ready to quit traveling for a while.
Oh, by the way the flight from HK to LAX played a rather cool trick. We left on Thursday the 23rd at around 5:30 PM (was supposed to be 4:00 PM) and arrived in LAX at around 1:30 PM, also of Thursday the 23rd (yes it took an hour and a half to make it to the next gate). Because of time zone differences my eleven hour flight took me about four hours back in time. Pretty cool huh?