I went to pick up someone from the airport around 8 PM the other night.
The lighting and holiday decorations were beyond nice–they were impressive.
Unfortunately my passenger and his fellow travelers had to wait 55 minutes to receive their luggage. When he asked why he was told that the airport had only one baggage crew on duty that night.
There was a time when your bags would be on the conveyor before you could walk from the gate to the luggage area.
That left a favorable impression on people about El Paso.
I don’t know who the baggage handlers work for. If they work for the airlines the airport should require them to staff adequately. If they work for the airport then the airport managers should see to it that passengers get their bags quickly.
Airplanes arrive on a schedule. This should not be hard to figure out.
It is hard enough for us to get out of town business people to come to El Paso.
This would be a step that would help.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Comrades, this details the conflict of interest between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The baggage handlers are being exploited by the airport and we must stand with them against fascistic capitalism.
So what if capitalists have to wait to get their bags? There are teachers who are severely underpaid who have to go to work every day and people worry about having to wait for services that exploit their fellow man.
This must STOP! Vote DEMOCRAT!
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“We demand that at this year’s forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now – as in right now.”
Greta Thunberg, 17 year old climate activist
And you people are worried about waiting for bags after getting off a climate destroying aircraft. How many people’s deaths are you personally responsible for?
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I suspect that both of the above comments came from the same source. For me, this serves as further proof that this blog should consider some changes, or maybe I should wake up and just stop trying to follow it. These lame attempts at sarcasm read as if they originated in the mind of a middle school kid.
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What do you suggest?
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This is the world’s easiest question: Either cancel the comments section, or start omitting all of sometimes ignorant, but all of the time boring, thoughtless, and one dimensional garbage that they type up. This is especially true with the ‘l have to let the world know my valuable opinions several times a week on different blogs’ crowd. Some of these people are so egotistical, that they’re actually proud to put there real name on this “intellectual masterpiece” that they were nice enough to share with us. You’ll end up cancelling over 95% of the replies either way. This reminds me of the boring, mindless, ignorant, and simple-minded crap that callers would spew back when we had local talk radio around twenty years ago. Heck, l was probably a bit guilty of being one of those people back then. lf l ever stop being so lazy and actually start my own blog, this is what l would do. This long winded rant is FINALLY over.
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It’s simple. I trust Brutus’s judgment to block or remove bull**** comments that are totally irrelevant and a waste of time like the stuff put up by comrade anonymous. Comrade reminds me of Kamala Harris laughing too hard at her own jokes. If some want to call that censorship, I can live with that because this is a privately operated blog. If Brutus has a personal life, he probably doesn’t have enough time to police all the comments as they get posted.
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If you only want to hear from like-minded people then set up accounts and give them out to people you know think like you. If you think sarcasm is not a valid form of communication then delete sarcastic comments.
Or you could make Dungan the leader of a gang of Brownshirts as he seems to have problems with people who don’t think like he wants them to.
It is simple, either the goal is discourse via free speech or it is for like minded people to agree with each other and therefore censorship of alternate views.
Make up your mind and own your decision.
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I somehow thought that Brutus’ question was directed to me, but I see that he already got a lot of response. I can only ask another question: Did it never occur to some of you that I would not be posting the things that I post if I did not see a need to do so? IOW, if you would either stop attacking others from behind your anonymity, and ranting about socialism, there’d be nothing for me to see and react to, now would there? I’d say that there are ways to control some of this. Just as with so many forums online, establish rules, and when folks go outside those rules, their posts are rejected. Rules like only one identity at a time, please. Rules like, no ad hominem attacks on anyone.
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There are rules. You just don’t agree with them.
The rules allow multiple identities, that are anonymous.
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Comrade Dungan, you speak truth. We should send them to the gulag.
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Comrade Dungan, please continue to complain about anonymous posts. Your incessant complaints bring great value to the blog.
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This is actually a great observation, Brutus. I’m a million miler on American so I have enough business travel experience to tell you that EP falls down in this area compared to other airports. Other airports normally have bags arriving within five-ten minutes of a walk from the gate. EP’s baggage handling process is so inefficient that it is often a wait of over 30 minutes. Plus, they are slow to post the plane numbers on the carousels so if you don’t remember the announcement on the plane of the carousel number there is also a hunt for the right carousel to watch factor. As a business traveler I only check bags for long trips, but most tourists check bags for all their trips. If we are serious about being a tourist destination, little things matter, like speed of getting your bag at the airport. Staffing should be evaluated and comparisons to the way airports like Phoenix and Dallas do it should be made. Plus there should be some on time metrics put in place so handlers have motivation to hustle. If you don’t measure it, you can’t fix it. Given the price of airfare and the amount of money the airport is making in landing fees, staffing shouldn’t be an issue that can’t be fixed. And to all of you posting facetiously, this is the type of problem that visibility can help address. Throwing up a bunch of sarcastic comments actually weakens Brutus’ message.
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Agree with John Dungan and Ticked Off Taxpayer…these juvenile comments add nothing to the discussion, and indeed detract from the value of the blog. Brutus does a lot of work to find interesting material and post it for comment. Respect that! If you want to show off, do it on your own nickel…pay for your own blog!
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Incessant whining about anonymous postings also detracts from the blog. Dungan needs to get over it and move on.
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Comrade, you make me happy! Sure;y there are enough of us we can form an Antifa group and spray bear mace in the face of people who we don’t like what they say.
Because other people have no right to think or say anything you don’t agree with.
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That was directed at Dungan. He is my Comrade and would make Stalin proud.
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I thought you are concerned about spending money wisely. I saw the lights at the airport. Nice, yes, but don’t you wonder about how much that cost? It was expensive, but a relatively small number of taxpayers got to enjoy them.
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Actually, that airport is the one entity that supports itself to the point it has surpluses. Unfortunately, those surpluses remain in the airport because it is a separate entity.
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Surpluses should be returned to the taxpayers or used to reduced the next year’s budget allocation.
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While the airport is owned by the City of El Paso, it is funded by its operations, but investments and a small amount of federal dollars. It does have some debt, but it pays that debt and at least in 2013, had more assets than debt. I say at least in 2013, because that was the last year it shows a financial report on its website. Now it lists monthly operations reports with statistics and doesn’t discuss financials. So, much for transparency. But, assuming funding mechanisms have stayed the same, the lights are paid for by the folks using the airport not local property tax revenue. There are restrictions on how airport funds can be used so they can’t be transferred back into the city regular budget.
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My airport experience here has been 100% positive for as long as I can recall. I don’t fly weekly like I did 15 to 20 years ago and my only suggestion is to have more direct flights to the east coast (which they may already have added).
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The same thing happened at DFW on 01-03-20
Only 11/2 hr wait at American and they were floors by business
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“floors by business”
huh?
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