I'm sorry to have missed the first episodes of the airline reality show. I've heard from friends that none of the US Big 6 airlines would go for it, only scrappy Southwest. The same type of show airs in England with Easyjet.

In my former life I travelled frequently on business, usually a couple times a month, which isn't even Road Warrior status, but often enough. I'm still trying to forget some of the scenes I've witnessed of badly-behaving travelers.

In my real life, that is traveling for pleasure, my biggest coup/challenge ocurred on a recent trip to Italy. I had a mileage-award free business-class ticket as well as 1P Premier status with UA. My 2 companions had bottom-of-the-pond-cheap-coach tix on the same routing. We were late into SFO & missed our connection to London. So, I started thinking of connections that might work across the country so we could at least arrive within several hours of our planned time. This because the counter agent whose 3rd language was English had said we'd have to wait 3 days for the next flight.

Me: How about the 10am flight via Denver? She: We don't fly to Denver. Me: Yes you do, & it's flight 783. She: Oh. Well, it's full (now, how can you tell that if you don't look up the flight????) We went thru the same drill with Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, St Louis, Wash DC, Miami, New York & finally SFO-London/Gatwick

She finally realized we were not going to go away for the 3 days she would have liked & miracle of all miracles, the last option worked: 1 biz seat & 2 coach seats turned up. But our tix were issued via Frankfurt, not London & our ticketed connecting service Frankfurt-Florence was on an obscure Lufthansa codeshare. A long, long squint at the computer with no finger action on keys. I realized that connections from London to Florence were from Heathrow & our new flight would take us into Gatwick & she didn't know what to do.

So, as gently & politely as possible, I mentioned that we could take the bus between the London airports with no trouble & at our own expense, so all she had to do was reissue the 3 tickets. Whew! Everyone saves face, we make it to Florence. Course our companions awaiting us there didn't catch up to us for 3 days as UA couldn't tell them where we were & how & when we might arrive.

The SFO agent also inadvertently (or maybe advertently) cancelled our return space, but that's a whole other story.

Then there was the Air India flight from Bombay totally chartered at the last minute by the king of Tonga, leaving several of us stranded for a few days. Saw some bad passenger behavior there...

Too many stories. My darling daughter-in-law insists I must write some of this stuff down, saying that if I get stung by a box jelly in Oz some day, my Most Precious Granddaughter needs to know about her Nonnie.

Gail