We recently went on holiday. It all started at 02:00hrs in the morning for a flight at 06:30. I visited a taxi office to book the taxi a month prior to our departure, no problem. I spoke to a person who booked my taxi, lovely. Had a nice conversation with said person.
The morning arrived, taxi turned up. We spoke to a man in the taxi and he loaded our bags, no problem. He drove us to the airport. Then it started. The parking machine that charged him to drop us off for 2 minutes would not work. Not our problem i guess we left him to it as he cussed at the machine. He was however polite to us.
Into the airport. It is 02:30, massive queues but well before take off time. Do you know why there are massive queues. Well i will tell you. They have decided to get rid of people at check in desks and replace them with machines. Slowly one by one these machines were pinging up as no entry. When we enquired what was happening we were told that the machines had run out of paper. When we eventually got to near the machines a customer came up with a simple suggestion. “Put some new paper in the machines.” The answer was stupefying. “It is not our job and anyway we do not know where the paper is.” True, honestly true. Then guess what, they opened up the manual check in desks with people manning( no apology for the word manning) them. Backlog gone, people power worked.
Then onto security, another joke. My partner has been picked up twice now for drugs by a machine. She has been smeared twice and both times tested manually was negative. The machine picks up on her moisturiser. Machines!!!!!!!!!
Then you come home and try and put your passport into the new machines. They do not have any lateral response. If it is not inserted perfectly then it doesn’t work. It does not take into account different levels of intelligence. Not everyone is tech savvy. Same goes for the checking in machines. Even youngsters were getting pissed off by these machines, that ran out of paper. Ironically the rep at the holiday destination said you will have no problem getting home as we do it the old fashioned way and you will speak to a person. Checkin was silky smooth.
For us it was fine as we are seasoned travellers but in the news today i read about a couple who missed their flight for these very reasons i have mentioned. The irony is in this poor couples case is that the airline spent an hour taking the couple luggage off the plane once they were through security. Just let them on the plane you morons.
Human beings are being taken out of the loop and computers do not have compassion, feelings, and do not possess the notion of thinking outside of the box. Mind you after the comment at our departure airport in Britain i think they are no better than machines. Our arrivals airport is a tiny terminal on Corfu, well done Corfu 10/10