Canarsie

I usually state “Hot soup, coming through!” in an authoritative and loud — but not yelling or screaming — voice.

You would be surprised how well this works in almost any situation when people are blocking your way...

roadrunner21

People who stand up and scramble for their bags before the plane gets anywhere near the gate.
( Yes that does happen in lots of places overseas )

GIGFY

+1.

Last week at LHR, a lady (?) crowding the carousel said to me as I gently (and politely, with an "excuse me", moved forward to retrieve my bag (elite-tagged, and on this occasion. one of the first on the belt) said: "hey I cannot see the bags now".

I simply said "but I can see mine", lent forward to collect it, and walked off.

She was then speechless, but her face spoke a 1,000 words...

celle

Particularly China, we found. They were standing up in the aisles and grabbing their bags the second the wheels hit the runway.

anat0l

Baggage claim is a mugs game these days; probably my most hated process of the whole air travel deal with the possible exception of security screening.

I will admit to parking myself a spot closest to where the bags enter the carousel; of course I stay behind the trolley/safety line (if applicable). I must admit to being annoyed that I can have all the priority in the world to leave the plane first, be processed for immigration first, but when I get to the baggage carousel, half the plane has arrived before the first bags decide to make an appearance.

Even worse is when my bags have been priority tagged but they arrive in any random order; sometimes my bags are in the last 25-40% of bags to be delivered. So much for priority tagging.

As for retrieving bags, if you want to stand near me, that's your funeral. I'll try not to hit you, but I'll not make any guarantees. I don't like it when people stand too close to me in a situation like baggage claim anyway, because that's a real pickpocketing risk.

underpressure

a new one this week.

The hotel receipt showed a breakout of taxes.

1% room tax for homeless shelters added to hotel rooms.

This was on top of 7% tourism development tax for the county
4% tax to pay for a new areana for the local sports team.

In total there was 19.5% tax on a hotel room.

anat0l

What happened to the other 7.5%? I suppose that pays your local politician?

Cha-cha-cha

Speaking of baggage claim:

the people who stand, often in a group of two or three or four, right next to the carousel with one or two or three baggage carts, thus blocking a good ten or fifteen foot stretch of the carousel frontage from anyone else during the whole lengthy time they're waiting for their own bags! STAND BACK!

PTravel

Where was this?

underpressure

Miami....

My issue isn't that homeless need help, but charging a guy from Georgia to help fix Miami's homeless problem is just stupid.

I happen to work on that issue at home.

underpressure

State and local sales tax.

N965VJ

Now come on, those are investments.

PTravel

I agree with you completely.

underpressure

I'll add that if they use a portion of that 7.5% state and local taxes for that, more power to them.

Charging me for tourism development when I have obviously traveled to get there is another insult.

Two of the major conventions that I have attended for years have fianlly pulled the plug on Miami. ^

anat0l

At one point in Australian domestic air travel, AN (Ansett) collapsed and left many people out of work and devoid of their benefits. The government was strongly lobbied to dish out support to help all employees recover their benefits and assistance to find new work. The result of the government support - which was almost a "blood out of stone" situation - was a new surcharge on all domestic air tickets to the tune of $10 per seat.

So QF and DJ pax were all dishing out dosh to donate to out-of-work AN staff, despite:

• The capitulation of the airline was a lot due to the Tasman rival who took it over then subsequently stripped it and mismanaged it; they "paid off" the Australian government to avoid a more extensive inquiry
• The money collected through the surcharge by the Government was not convincingly shown to have all gone to former AN employees

So we all pay things that we would otherwise feel we shouldn't be responsible for.

To add to this, people regularly fly into airports where noise taxes are collected. Why should a traveller be penalised because some idiots decided that they would like to live near an airport or major flight path but they don't want the noise, even though the airport was there first, and in some cases, the flight path was too?