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Long Lines, Short Tempers
The Travel Critic · August 16, 1999

Helen Doyle abhors the long check-in lines that greet her at the airport whenever she travels.

In Boston, where she works as an administrative assistant, she endures the longest waits at the Delta Air Lines counter. "No matter what time you get to the airport - and especially for the early morning flights-the line is out the door," she says. "Sometimes I wonder how they ever get a plane off the ground when they can't organize an efficient check-in procedure." (Delta wouldn't comment on its long lines in Beantown.)

Airlines know that the check-in procedures are deeply flawed. And some of them, I found, are actually doing something about it.

Meanwhile, passengers react to this test of their patience in different ways. Doyle and most other travelers just gripe about the long queue. But some don't take it so well.

After a lengthy wait at a Continental Airlines ticket counter in Newark, N.J., last month, one of John C. Davis Jr.'s children tried to break past gate agent Angelo Sottile. When Sottile tried to restrain the child, he and Davis locked horns. Seconds later, Sottile lay on the ground with a broken neck and Davis was being hauled off by police and charged with aggravated assault.

Davis has filed a lawsuit against the carrier, claiming Sottile provoked him. "There is no doubt in my mind that the agent was irate and hostile because of the delays, long lines and inadequate facilities at the Continental check-in area," says Anthony Pope, Davis' attorney. "There were five flights going out of two gates at that time. You had children running around and people waiting in long lines."

No one is wasting an opportunity to paint Davis as a poster boy for air rage. But few have wondered if the conditions inside the Continental terminal, which agents call "the dungeon," didn't help set off the 29-year-old vacationer.

Checking in for a flight is the pits these days. You're herded like cattle toward a line of stone-faced ticket agents who demand to see your ID and then spend 10 minutes typing at their computers. They look up only to ask if you have any luggage to check or if you packed your own bags.

"If airlines really wanted to reduce the long lines, they'd stop asking stupid questions when we check in, and they'd make their computer systems work better and quicker," suggests consultant Doug White.

Continental Airlines is well aware that its employees refer to part of its Newark terminal as a dungeon, but spokeswoman Michele Treacy says the carrier doesn't share their sentiments. But, she says, "I can't discuss what, if anything, is being done. And I'm not going to comment beyond that."

Alaska Airlines' "airport of the future" project is among the most revolutionary of the initiatives. Not only is Alaska trying to reduce the amount of time a ticket agent must spend in front of a computer, but it's, in some cases, trying to do away with the need for passengers to stand in line.

Alaska spokesman Jack Evans says the goal is to make the check-in process easier and faster. But the effort is about more than saving a few keystrokes on the cumbersome computer reservations system. Part of the carrier's plan is to eliminate some ticket counters and send gate agents into check-in areas with handheld computers, as car rental companies do at express checkouts.

By removing the barriers, Alaska is taking a first step in humanizing its employees-and preventing anything like the Newark incident from happening to them. The airline is testing various components of the new system during the next two years. Some elements, such as electronic ticketing kiosks, are already available at some airports. Others, like counterless check-in areas, will become part of the new Anchorage International Airport terminal that's going to be built by 2002.

Those airlines that are too backward to innovate like Alaska should at the very least consider some remedial training for their besieged gate agents. Hand-to-hand combat classes might be a good start.

Come to think of it, we passengers might benefit by taking a few classes ourselves.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.