jasoncapecod
Well-known member
Just flew non stops Newark Tokyo
14 hrs slept zero mins
Awful
Would have slept better if I was sitting on a stool
14 hrs slept zero mins
Awful
Would have slept better if I was sitting on a stool
Ski-Air Travel
- Thread starter jimk
- Start date
You're @ChrisC's hero: RAWDOG!! Actually, maybe not -- if I understand it correctly, you also have to forgo food and drink, which I don't think you did.
EMSC
Well-known member
Assuming United based on the originating airport? Sounds more like the seats you get on Frontier than any of the mainline airlines...
It's too bad you had that experience, as I realized very early on in my long distance travelling that 'he who sleeps most, wins' when it comes to flying those kind of trips. Nothing worth paying attention to on a plane, but always tons of interesting things to pay attention to when in a foreign land.
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
Ouch, although you don't sleep on the red-eye going to Europe either. You just like to complain!
A heads-up to people who rent cars in Europe -- there's a new protocol that I encountered at Munich airport two months ago whereby a separate "objective/non-affiliated" entity inspects your car upon return so that, ostensibly, there's no self-serving motivation on behalf of the company to hit you with unwarranted or exaggerated damage fees.
Take a look at this, a few pages from the 22-page document that the rental agency sent me to document a tiny scuff on the hubcap (see pic below) for which they demand €502/$582 (including a $110 admin fee). Two potential suspicions for the niggling damage that allegedly occurred while I drove the car, which I disputed with a detailed response in point-by-point German legalese telling them to piss off.
I responded in mid-March and haven't heard anything since. We'll see if they'll get back to me at some point.
Has anyone here run into this racket?
Take a look at this, a few pages from the 22-page document that the rental agency sent me to document a tiny scuff on the hubcap (see pic below) for which they demand €502/$582 (including a $110 admin fee). Two potential suspicions for the niggling damage that allegedly occurred while I drove the car, which I disputed with a detailed response in point-by-point German legalese telling them to piss off.
- The inspector who identifies the purported damage may get a bonus (a portion of the fee) as incentive to go over the car with a fine-toothed comb.
- The rental car company is expecting customers not to fight back since it's easier to let their insurance (private, credit card, or the ripoff kind that you buy at the counter) cover it. It's likely a big profit center, similar to airlines charging for baggage.
I responded in mid-March and haven't heard anything since. We'll see if they'll get back to me at some point.
Has anyone here run into this racket?
EMSC
Well-known member
Non-Skiing, but for the first time ever I actually went outside the secure portion of Newark airport (can't tell you how many times I've transited to connecting planes there though - a huge number). I have no context to how it was in the bad days when it used to be described as terrible, but it seemed decent enough on the airport side of things, though with various construction still present on some roads. Biggest terribleness is the way the roads around the airport are configured and how they direct you out of and back to the rental car parking garage. Whomever designed those routes in/out should have their head examined.
Of course whomever designed the arterial roads and signage for northern Jersey for most of the roads in general should have their head examined.
Of course whomever designed the arterial roads and signage for northern Jersey for most of the roads in general should have their head examined.
ChrisC
Well-known member
Yes, Zurich Airport is using a third-party service that scans your car with 100s of cameras. They found a small scratch on the inside (side) of the driver's side door - size: under an inch. I fought with the service agent for a while over recording the scratch on any check-in damage assessment. We had to reach Sixt Customer Service by phone. Of course, my conversational level of German helped the process.
I had no idea what was going on, but these check-in machines are incredibly sensitive and accurate, more so than any human. The poor 3rd party customer service reps have to note any damage the machine reports. The Rental Car Agencies can choose what to consider damage.
I cannot imagine this technology being deployed in the United States, if more orderly societies like Germany and Switzerland are having so many issues. One would need to really loosen 'failure/error rates' to prevent pure rage at rental car counters and check-ins.
The only other comparable chaos is Mexico or Central America, where super-cheap rental car rates are advertised, and USA customers are required to obtain more expensive insurance. Credit card coverage is not accepted. Cancun and Costa Rica car rental offices are full of rage, with employees explaining the grift/structural pricing differences employed.
ChrisC
Well-known member
Lucky never to have gotten stuck overnight in Newark.
Parts of suburban New Jersey and Long Island design, especially around freeways, leave a lot to be desired.
I've rented cars from EWR at least 4x. I don't even recall a parking garage. They were off site parking lots and yes navigation to them is a challenge.
EMSC
Well-known member
All of the major rental car players have been consolidated into a multistory parking garage across from Terminal A. No idea for how long, the garage is clearly pretty new. Leaving, you have to exit it then go around all 4 sides of the garage with 2 traffic lights and several merges just to get onto the expressways. Wildly dumb design IMO.
Heading back to rental return there are a succession of sometimes right hand exits and sometimes left hand exits with signage not clear until the turn is about to happen - as you are driving on a 2 or even 3 lane road. Not a lot of fun.
My EWR rental cars were in 2011, 2014, 2018 and 2024.
While I'm certainly not going to defend NJ roadway design, it's pretty rich that someone from Denver -- home of perpetually clogged two-lane (!) Peña Boulevard -- is criticizing a different airport for that aspect. DIA's designers had no excuse for such an unforced error considering that the initial land parcel was about the size of Rhode Island. FWIW, I've never ever hit traffic driving into EWR.
FYI, EWR was never meant to be a major airport but by the time People Express (later rebranded as Continental, then United) created a hub there, the airport was shoehorned into a confined space. Per Google: Newark Liberty International Airport was originally carved out of just 68 acres of marshland in 1928 as a modest airmail and small municipal terminal. Nobody anticipated it evolving into the megahub it is today. EWR's footprint these days is a little over 2,000 acres (compared to DEN's 34,000!). Its path to massive capacity unfolded with little initial foresight:
- Inauspicious beginnings: EWR opened as the first commercial airport in the NYC area, but when LaGuardia Airport opened in 1939, airlines abandoned Newark, almost turning it into a ghost town.
- Lack of Expansion Planning: When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey took control, much of the surrounding marshland was allocated to what is now Port Newark rather than saving it for airport growth.
- Constrained Layout: Because the footprint was boxed in by the seaport, highways, and residential areas, the runway configuration severely limits its capacity in poor weather.
- Modern Crunch: Despite the lack of original planning for a megahub, EWR now handles over 49 million passengers annually.
EMSC
Well-known member
I don't recall complaining about Newarks hemmed in aspects (though I bet those United pilots that hit the truck landing from Italy a few weeks ago probably are). I do note that Pena was fine as a 4 lane when it handled the as-built DIA expectation of 40-50M passengers. Unfortunately its now well over 80M passengers per year with the local enviros promising to go scorched earth if CDOT proposes to expand Pena to match it's new reality.
I will continue to complain however that someone would be dumb enough to require multiple stop lights and merges and driving around all 4 sides of a huge parking garage instead of simply having you exit directly to the road you need to get on to actually leave. It's quite stupid. And despite the horrible bus to remote rentals at DIA, once you leave your car provider you don't go in a confusing literal circle for the next several minutes to find a way out.
And it is certainly not just Newark airport, but I always complain about poor signage which is so very easy to fix. Too bad many airports and many other locations in the US also just do not do a very good job with letting non-locals know what is coming up and when to switch lanes.