Anybody got a stagecoach?

Bermuda travelogue later. Rant about airlines now.

You could say the American air travel system is broken. That would imply that there is a system at all. Case in point:

As I type this, I'm at the Philadelphia International Airport. The operation here is in complete chaos, owing to an FAA computer failure earlier in the day and storms over the northern Midwest this evening.

My flight was scheduled to depart at 8:30 p.m. from Gate B9. As of 8:15 p.m., that gate's previous flight, to Seattle, had not yet departed. All the gate agent at B9 could tell us is that my flight was not departing at 8:30 p.m. from Gate B9. She couldn't tell us when it was going to depart, or from where; all she could tell us is what wasn't going to happen. That was information we already had.

At about 8:35, the gate agent at B9 announced that our flight would depart from C24. But they didn't tell the agent at C24. We told the agent at C24. The agent at C24, needless to say, was surprised as hell to see us.

So an unhappy gate agent is now facing 200 unhappy people -- not to mention the people who are getting off the plane that just landed, many of whom have missed connections because of all the chaos and confusion.

As of right now, my flight still shows that it's taking off at 8:30 from B9. It's 9:08, and there ain't nobody at B9. A couple of people just ran like hell to B9, only to get redirected here. However, at the U.S. Airways web site, the flight shows it's taking off from C24 at 8:30. That was 38 minutes ago, and we're all still here.

So I ask:

Why wouldn't somebody at B9 call the guy at C24 and warn him we were coming?

Why isn't the information updated in one central place? Great that the usairways.com website was updated; however, that's not very helpful to a bunch of people in an airport who don't have access to a computer. Shouldn't they have updated it on the boards first?

Why, when it becomes apparent that chaos is going to happen -- and if the computers go down, there will be chaos; when there are storms, there will be chaos -- why do airlines wait so long before making adjustments? They've been through this enough already. You'd think there'd be a contingency plan. I'm not saying it would be easy, or readily apparent, but it seems it could be done.

Why the hell is it always so damn hot in the Philadelphia airport? No matter what time of year, this place is always a steambath. At least you can count on something when you're traveling.

And most importantly: Why do airlines not staff at levels appropriate to the demand? It's completely inhuman to make one gate agent face 200 people who want to get on a plane and 200 people who are on their way on the plane. That's 400 vs. 1; even if only 10 percent of those people have questions, that's 40 people.

A system that is built to work only when conditions are ideal is not a system. I guess it doesn't matter, because people won't stop traveling. We get what we pay for.

Edit to all this: We boarded the plane at 9:41 p.m. Because of all the backed-up flights, we took off at 12:02 a.m. We were on the plane on the ground longer than we were on the plane in the air. At least the air conditioning worked.