Boarding Passes Please

I have a lot to share about my recent trip to Ireland with my 81 year-old mom, so I'd thought I'd start here -- boarding the planes to and from the Emerald Isle. And it is mostly emerald, a deep, rich, fresh green, dotted with two story houses and gray castle ruins, with herds of cattle and horses, and flocks of white sheep -- all grazing contentedly in the serene undulating hills. But getting there and back by plane was a challenge -- for me anyway, a novice, not an experienced international traveler (well, not since 2005 and my pilgrimage to the Holy Land). I had forgotten everything I had learned about flying and its practices and procedures.

My siblings and I had chipped in to send Mom to her native land as a birthday present. Having never been, it was her lifelong dream. I volunteered to go to make things easier for her, since none of my two brothers and sisters, or their spouses, could do it. Anyway, I am retired - I had free time on my hands. No writing for a week, which would turn out not to be true, but small price to pay for Mom to meet her cousins in Clonmel and Carrick-an-Suir, birthplace of the Cavanaugh clan.

After researching Ireland online, emailing our host cousins, checking out travel companies etc., I discovered my good friend Chet, a past co-worker, was a Travel agent. Ah, this made it much easier - a human on the other end of email and the phone who could answer my picky questions and ease my concerns. After speaking at length together, I hired him, a good decision. We settled on Gate1 Travel as the tour company. Chet and I fleshed out a bare-bones itinerary, which I would later fill in, and picked the dates - April 29th, departure, and May 6, 2013 return. We were to fly nonstop out of Philly Airport, equidistant from Newark Airport from our home. (Newark would have been easier in hindsight.)

I sent Gate1 a deposit online, and we were on our way to an affordable trip (we thought - more later). After back and forth's with Chet, Mom and I agreed to make Dublin our base of operations, and also signed up for a one day trip to the magnificent Cliffs of Moher (pronounced "More"). I got separate tickets online to visit the famous Guinness Storehouse and tasting, as well as Dublin Bus Hop-on, Hop-off passes to tour the city for a day. Our hotel, the Camden Court, in center-city, was also booked for us. After making the final payment two weeks before, I received online a twelve-page detailed description from Gate1 of all aspects of the trip, including, most importantly, our US Airways ticket numbers. I only had to do three things before leaving: pack my bag with Janet's help, print the boarding passes within 24-hours of departure, and pick up Mom. Janet would drive us there and pick us up. All set. Almost.

A day before leaving I hurriedly emailed Chet.
"Jan told me I need the plane boarding passes. Do you do that or do I?'
       "You do, Rod. remember my last email and the link I sent? You go to US Airways website, click Manage Reservations, and print your passes."
"Oh, okay, I'll do that tomorrow then?"
        "Absolutely, within 24 hours.Got it?"
"Got it. Thanks Chet!" I had exchanged over a dozen emails with Chet, and a long phone call, during this process. He was kind and responsive to my every need.

I went online. Their main page had the tab I sought. I clicked it and entered the special code Chet had given me. It confirmed departure time and seat numbers. I clicked "print" for the passes and all was done neatly and cleanly. Success! However, Without Janet having recently flown to London with friends, and having done this herself, or without Chet's help, I don't know how I would have figured out to print the boarding passes.

As good as the Internet can be, it assumes to much. Way to much. It expects me to intuitively know how to do all this. It expects me to click on tabs or blue letters, even though it doesn't say "click here" like it used to in the early days. "How to obtain boarding passes" wasn't a clickable item. (FAQ pages are notorious for decent explanations, but no clickable links to the solution -- one still has to search the site.) Nothing explicit or helpful to me, a novice, at all. I've found this time and time again with the Internet. Supposedly good, even well-established websites have these communication problems. They assume I know how to do it, and what to click when. Hogwash. Without external help, I challenge anyone to say this process is intuitive. In a complex world, I need explicit directions.

Coming back was more traumatic. Janet had told me the hotel would print the passes for me. I asked them, and the clerk kindly printed something -- a bar code -- not passes. What do I do with this? I even went on the hotel computer for three euros for thirty minutes (cheap), to try it myself. Once on US Airways website I could not find our departure passes. Nada. I got anxious, and was anxious from that moment until I saw a kiosk in the ticket line at Dublin Airport's US Airways terminal later that day.

I certainly didn't want to frighten Mom. But I vaguely remembered using a kiosk to print my own boarding pass years earlier. I saw others using the four nearby stations. While Mom waited in the long ticket line, I waited for a kiosk to open up. I didn't see a scanner for the bar code -- the only thing I had. I almost panicked. But I saw "Enter special code" on the screen. I had written down the code Chet had given me a week earlier. I was worried it might not work, but I entered it. Quickly the two passes printed. Hurray!

I am not sophisticated. I'm an average Joe. I don't travel by plane much. How was I supposed to know all this?  No signs at the airport helped, either. A simple sign on the kiosk "Print Boarding Passes Here" would have been a tremendous help. But no, nothing explicit.To add insult to injury, I got back in line with Mom and waited 15 minutes to see a ticketing clerk. I showed our passes and passports.

She said, "Do have any luggage to check in?"

"No, just carry-ons."

        "Then you're all all set, just go to the USPC Gates marked on your boarding pass."

"Uh, that's it? Which way?" I didn't tell Mom we had wasted our time in this line.

        "Oh, take the elevator to floor 2."

"Uh, thanks."

There were no signs to the elevators or to the gates that I recall. I guess I'll just have to develop more intuition if I'm to survive in an online or machine-driven world.

My third company will be a sign-making one.