For the past 15 years we have enjoyed efficient air travel to Europe. We rarely ran into weather delays or mechanical downtime. Perhaps we’ve been lucky, but I wonder something more fundamental is afoot. In business, one way a firm maximizes their profit is to keep their assets busy generating revenue.

However, anyone who has studied business beyond the basic level also learns what everyone in the operations side of business experiences – you can try to run every machine or airplane at 100% continuously but, Murphy’s Law rules. In the airlines, it seems bad weather and mechanical breakdowns are what idle their assets in unpredictable ways. It’s simply the nature of things.

During our 2025 trip to France, we booked ten flights, all told, and eight were canceled or delayed. Imagine that every time a passenger changes his/her booking, there is another meal to be carried, a little more fuel to be burned, boarding takes a little longer, and so on. Re-planning for these changes is effort wasted. Statistically, it’s part of the noisy background that all businesses usually take for granted. We passengers feel it because we can’t as easily adapt ourselves to a flight that is scheduled to take 10 hours, and it gets stretched to 24 hours. The airline pays a price, too, but theirs is smoothed over by the accountants’ abstract formulae, which is based on the idea that ‘we’ve always done it this way.” I would contend that the churn itself is symptomatic of an inefficiency. At some point, a more optimally run airline may evolve and give the others competition, and then this churn inefficiency will be addressed. Customers, like us, would notice.

Let me go at this chronologically so you get the full flavor. We left home with six reservations on Delta – three legs to France and three legs back. Our first flight was delayed for two hours, then canceled because of mechanical problems. Delta has no ‘spare’ capacity. That would violate the 100% utilization business rule. This cancellation created a cascade as the other two legs had to be canceled, too, because we could not make our connections. We appealed to Delta to re-book us. I understand they are legally bound to do so. Delta fills their planes to 100% capacity on every flight, so they didn’t have any aircraft capacity to deliver the service they committed to provide.

We left the house in the morning, and our first flight to Europe finally took off at midnight. Delta’s partner was KLM. Of course, Delta’s partners try to run their airlines with the same B-school 100% utilization formula, so KLM had no upgraded seating to offer. We got what was unsold, which was the worst coach seats. We were already exhausted and now were on a red-eye in coach. If we were twenty years younger, it would be no big deal. We tried to sleep as we flew all night.

The next day, KLM landed us at Scippo in the Netherlands, where we were to connect to another KLM flight that evening to take us to our destination, Toulouse, France. I don’t recall being bored all day. I distracted myself by reading a Michael Crichton thriller “Timeline”. I was reading it for enjoyment, and to observe Crichton’s writing craft, so I was distracted, my wife, less so

 The connection to Toulouse went off without a hitch. We arrived in Toulouse just before midnight. The shuttle bus to our hotel in the city center was well-hidden, as was the ticket machine (all instructions in French) which was tucked away in a dark corner. The kindness of strangers saved us, and we caught the last shuttle bus for that night.  We rolled into the city center hotel after midnight. The Maitre’d was annoyed, but we’d called ahead and warned them of our airline delays.

We spent a couple of days in Toulouse recovering from jet lag and seeing the sights like St. Thomas Aquinas’ birthplace, and bridges built in the Middle Ages. We trundled our suitcases across the street literally, to the train station and caught a fast train to Carcassonne, where the organized tour would start.

Returning to the USA – The air travel gods Revenge

After two weeks of touring, we were on our way home, booked into a hotel at the Toulouse airport to avoid delays with the shuttle bus. It was to no avail. Our Delta flight could not get off the ground because of heavy fog. This went on for a few hours, the plane was loaded, as the fog was lifting in Toulouse, but the plane was still grounded because our destination airport, Charles De Gaulle still had fog. We sat on the tarmac in Toulouse, until we had clearance from De Gaulle. We arrived at Charles De Gaulle just two minutes short of making the connection to the Delta flight (to SLC), so, once again, we appealed to Delta for re-booking.

Once again, they handed us off to another airline. We lucked out; it was Air France. There were no special meals, but the wine was free and seats were comparable to what we had booked with Delta. Fog rolled in again, and delayed takeoff for an hour, then we were on our way back to the USA, flying directly to San Francisco which helped make up some time. It was a good recovery by Air France/Delta.

Amazingly, one of the Air France crew walked around and apologized for the one hour weather delay. He said they would try to make up the lost time. I haven’t seen an American airline treating customers like that.

We arrived in San Francisco in much better shape than the outbound trip.

My wife had logged every detail of the incoming trip. Soon after our return, Delta sent each of us a notice of a $300 refund with some cryptic codes identifying the reason for their generosity. We reviewed our situation and agreed between ourselves that $300 was inadequate. She soon had a refund request submitted to Delta. About ten days later, a letter arrived from Delta containing more cryptic calculations, which was an acceptable reimbursement. I suspect this is one of those situations where you must advocate for yourself or you lose.

I have positive feelings for the tour, but not the air travel. We have another trip to Europe scheduled for 2026, but we are considering trying a cruise ship in 2027. Was it our aging or the Airline industry that motivated this shift? Maybe a little of both.

In the next section of this post I have chronicled, some unexpected problems with the French train system, which a more experienced travelers could probably have avoided. It’s here for your use and/or enjoyment.

Train and Taxi Travel from Toulouse to Carcassonne

We observed that the farther one goes south in France, the fewer are the English speakers. This part of rural France doesn’t attract as many non-French tourists like the other regions. This was part of the appeal of going there. It seemed more authentically French.

In Toulouse, the French train was sparsely manned. The train workers’ union had threatened to strike the night before, but called it off. No one checked tickets or walked the length of the train. In America I’ve heard that sometimes employees can avoid losing wages during a strike, if they were on sick leave when the strike was called. Perhaps that trick works here, too.

The train was speedy (about 100 kph) and arrived in Carcassone on time. Trains make stops for two minutes (Patricia tells me it is actually five) to let passengers on and off. The protocol is that those getting off, get off first, then those who are boarding move through the doors after. However, there were no attendants to help a disabled man on crutches, with his wife who struggled with their luggage. They blocked the aisle, and with the doors automatically closing; we could not get off.

Next stop was Norbonne, about twenty minutes away. At Norbonne, the attendant said  that we could buy a ticket at the vending machine and that the next train was due in twenty minutes. Right on time, the train arrived, and we settled in for the short ride back to Carcassonne. We had allocated all afternoon to get to Carcassonne, so the delays were annoying but not stressful.

What we did not know was that about halfway to Carcassonne the train was going to stop at an unnamed station which our previous train had bypassed.

There was no signage, just a shabby station. We didn’t know what the Carcassonne station looked like, because we had been pre-occupied by the disabled couple. So we got off to look around. The train immediately took off. The station did look a bit small, but we thought we might be at the extreme eastern end of Carcassonne station. We went outside to look for a taxi. There were no taxis, and there was not much of a town either. Patricia tried Uber. The app said that the cost of a ride to our hotel was $180 EU, about 20 times what we just paid Norbonne for a ticket to Carcassonne. Uber’s map confirmed that we weren’t in Carcassonne, but somewhere else, with no name on the map. I nicknamed the place Forgettable.

We re-entered Forgettable Station to buy another ticket. The station had one employee, a ticket clerk who spoke no English. Patricia took over. Her French is much better than mine. Still it took two cell phones and Google translating both sides of the French and English conversation for her to buy two tickets from Forgettable to Carcassone.

At Carcassonne station, we took a taxi to the hotel. There were tourists arriving from various places. Competition for taxis was interesting, but the taxi drivers were kind and helpful. We checked in to our hotel just minutes before the tour meeting began.

After the meeting, night was falling. We walked as a group through the streets of Carcassonne to The Castle. It covers more than twice the area of the Tower of London. This castle is very much a going concern, with dozens of restaurants. Our tour had begun.