One of my biggest fears when I fly... Well.One of my SECOND biggest fears when I fly is that I'll get to the gate and they won't have a seat for me.
So even though I've BOOKED and PAID FOR my ticket, I won't be able to go because they don't actually have a real seat than I can really sit in on the plane.
This fear became more prominent after I started watching both the UK and US version of the reality TV show AIRLINE.
The whole point of watching AIRLINE is to watch people get in fights with airline personal which they do for two reasons.
1) Alcohol: Southwest Airlines has a "no boozers" policy so if you're too drunk they won't let you on. Hilarity ensues.
2) People who can't get on planes for reasons of overbooking for missed flights or weather.
Nothing, but nothing, pisses people off more than finding out they don't have a seat for reasons that are entirely the airline's fault. These are the best airline fights.
I suppose after too many years of watching and enjoying these on TV I started feeling nervously guilty, and considered the possibility that I was tempting fate making fun of something that could EASILY happen to me.
I was reminded of this fear when I noticed this story in the New York Times today:
DALLAS — The 400 ticketholders who were denied seats at the Super Bowl Sunday when temporary bleachers erected inside Cowboys Stadium were deemed unsafe were offered free tickets to next year’s Super Bowl as guests of the N.F.L., Commissioner Roger Goodell said Monday.
Can you imagine? I mean, there's very few things a person goes to that they're not fully committed to attending. LIke, it's going to be a drag if you go to a Black Eyed Peas concert (for whatever reason you would decide to do such a thing) and it turns out they don't have your tickets/seats.
But the people who came to the Superbowl yesterday, were like, more than what you would call just PREPPED or COMMITTED to the days activities.
Attending the Superbowl, for fans, is like religion where your religion is less glum/scary and more exhilaratingly validating.
It's surgery for you sports fan soul. It's FULLY BODY PAINTING fan commitment.
I saw a few peeps on TV getting turned away and they were like.
Like MAD.
It turns out more than 400 people were displaced. 1,250 people were without the seats that were originally planned for them when the structure that was built to seat them were declared unsafe and unusable.
Key word here being UNSAFE.
What they should have said, clearly, as they were turning people away from the gate was, "We just saved your life from becoming a blip on a bad CBS TV special by not seating you in this section of temporary seating that would have surely killed you and 1249 others."
In other news, Packers by 6.
That's all the numbers I have for you right now.
xo
m