Today's Washington Post Business Section devotes about ten pages to a series of stories on coach air travel. Their reporter (a 25-year veteran of reporting on airlines and air safety) spent 21 days taking 18 flights on Delta, American, United, Southwest, TWA, Continental, America West, US Airways, and Northwest. All in coach. Unfortunately, the paper hasn't put the articles on their Web site yet. I'll try to let you know if they do. In the meantime, it's worth a trip to your local library, if they get the Post.

thank you phil - I am interested (and my local library in Zurich has only the NY Times Sunday paper).

The URL is http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv.../odyssey13.htm

dgolds, Thanks for the URL to the Washington Post article. I've been reading it for the past hour.Lots of good updated info.

Philforest and dgolds, many thanks! This is a great piece.

Most interesting and useful thing about that article is the listing of the addresses and phone numbers for customer service/customer care departments for each of the Big 8 airlines. We'll see how good the folks at Delta Customer Care are ...

I'm still reading (I'm slow) and I'm impressed. I think this guy has done a great reporting job. I especially like the story about the lady who booked to Birmingham (even though she really wanted to go to Atlanta) through Atlanta and had her Atlanta friend meet her in Birmingham. Her flight was a conection in Atlanta and weather cancelled the leg to Birmingham. She called her friend and said, "come back to Atlanta", then found that she couldn't get her Atlanta friend on the cell phone to tell her that the airline (Delta?) wouldn't let her cancel the Atlanta-Birmingham part of her ticket without cancelling the whole thing. Anyhow: The bottom line was that our reporter left her sitting on a cart (at least they didn't make her walk), waiting for a RedCoat.

A very interesting article.

I have to agree with the comments from United about the desirability of the extra space in the Airbus A320 series. I took a short hop (LHR-DUB) on Aer Lingus this weekend, out in an A321 and back on a B737-400. It may be an illusion but the Airbus feels much bigger and I am certain that the seats were wider than the Boeing. Even on a short flight that extra inch or two can make a lot of difference to your mood and I felt a lot more comfortable in the A321.

Thanks for pointing us in the direction of the piece.

I read everything they put online by last night, and from what I've read so far, I would call this "slamming" coach travel.

From what I read, the reporter was objective, although he did take some well-deserved jabs at the airlines. I like his quotations from the Airlines, although judging from the frequency of some companies, I get the impression that he got cooperation from a few companies but not all.

Don Phillips ( the writer of the article) has done a great job writing transportation stories at the Post. He's also an avid train fan and writes for Train Magazine. Note that he took Amtrak from LA to St. Louis to get a break from all his flights!

Thanks. Interesting story. You may want to check out the replies on the hyperlink with peoples' worst problems and how they feel about airline travel. It's comical and the stories run the gamut! Some of the complaints are so incredibly and comically minor!