The Personal No-Fly List

Christopher Elliott is a meat & potatoes guy who spends most of his time covering the operational side of travel -- which in brief terms, amounts to collating and tracking a lot of consumer bitchery. In the latest installment of his syndicated column "The Troubleshooter," he notes that all travelers have their personal blacklists of entities they'll never do business with again, in the face of all reason, due to past slights (repeated or otherwise, imaginary or actual). Elliott then goes on to present a laundry list of collected grievances from his readers, which is all well and good, but I was hoping we'd get to see Elliott's blacklist. Of course, he can't really devote a column to that, since he's scrupulous journalist. Fortunately, I am not.

Note that this list is not comprehensive, and covers only those entities I will never, ever, for any reason, make use of. Obviously, many more have offended me in ways large and small, but I'm willing to forgive, or else circumstantially forced to forget because of a lack of other options. Vendors and owners, rest assured! Even if I give you the business here, I swear to always cover your doings with complete, neutral objectivity.

AirTran Airways: Granted, I was foolish enough to buy a connecting flight through Atlanta (see below). But there was simply no need to remind us that we were merely the cut-rate beef that keeps your sad operation barely afloat from year to year. The flight was delayed and delayed and delayed with impunity, and not a single AirTransylvanian (at the gate or on the phone) even bothered to make their various conflicting lies sound convincing. When your employees already behave as the living dead, how can we expect them to care if we're all killed as well? Do you really think I'm going to use that $20 consolation coupon toward future AirTran torment?

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport: I'm sure that merely writing this will be enough to cause the entire Atlanta airport to shut down, so fragile has its infrastructure become. You'd think the facility was located in a 9,000-degree methane-laced atmosphere full of lava storms and antimatter lightning, so often does mysterious (and yet invisible) "weather" cause problems here. The only solution is to stop flying through ATL and choke it off until it dies. Sorry, Delta.

American Airlines Food: Suffice it to say that the one time I dared buy an inflight sammich from American because I was about to starve to death, a rat ran up my leg. I think he only stopped climbing because he saw I was eating one of the airline's sandwiches, and not, say, something rats would be interested in.

TACA: "Take A Chance Airlines," serving Central America with cheap service for (sometimes human) cargo since 1931, once decided that rather than take my flight to Belize, we'd all be much happier in El Salvador. This was announced as we made a leisurely turn inland away from Belize. No explanation was forthcoming, though we were assured that another plane would eventually take us from San Salvador to Belize City. With no escort or documents explaining why we were in the wrong country, we walked past half-staffed machine-gun nests to another TACA counter at the San Salvador airport, where no one had any idea what was going on. Eventually they found us a plane to Belize, though it seemed like a real imposition on our part.

The Last Cheeseburger Sold at the Burger King in Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport Before They Close at Midnight: Surprisingly, kind of shitty!