Something that verges on miraculous happened to me on my trip to San Diego:  I experienced a round trip of flying that experienced no significant delays and two uneventful flights.  Sadly that qualifies as miraculous in modern air travel.

I traveled on USAir and the only notable negative was that during the flight to California, which took off at 6:00-ish, they ran out of meal and snack boxes (available for the bargain price of $6-ish dollars) before the stewardesses made it half way through the cabin.  Go figure that a flight that took off at dinner time would have hungry passengers.  I have no problem with them charging for meals if they let the passengers know ahead of time, but good gracious you’d think they would have planned to have a few more meals available on a trans-continental flight that took off at dinner time.  Luckily I’d already eaten on the way to the airport so I didn’t need a meal, and for the return flight I made sure I brought plenty of snacks to sustain me for the flight.

The way I see it the airlines’ primary job is to get passengers to their destinations on time, or close to it, in something approximating comfort.  The fact that when they do so it feels exceptional says a lot about what’s wrong with the airline industry.

Both flights were oversold so they spent a lot of time at the gates trying to bribe passengers to give up their seats in return for free round trip tickets anywhere in the lower-48 states.  That’s why I was glad to read last week that the Feds are raising the minimum rates that airlines have to pay when they bump passengers.  I think they’re going to need as much encouragement as possible to treat us right.