Sergio and I will not be traveling to Mid-Ohio Con (see previous item) via National Airlines, partly because they've never flown to Columbus, Ohio and partly because they went out of business yesterday. This is sad news, and not just on account of I'm stuck with a mess of frequent flyer miles from a defunct air carrier. No, the reason I have all those useless points is that I really liked National…as much as you can like an airline company…which, admittedly, is not all that much. But any time I went to Vegas or New York on my own dime, I tried to fly National if the schedule even remotely worked.
The flights I flew were always on-time, the employees all did everything you'd expect airline personnel to do, and their section of the terminal in Vegas (their hub) was the most comfortable airport in which I've ever done time. Whenever I was coming home from L.V., I actually used to go to the airport early because I could set up my laptop on a table in the food court, sit there and work in pleasant surroundings. (Much of Fanboy, a comic I did recently with Sergio, was written in the National Airlines area of McCarren Airport…a fact I hope did not contribute to this bankruptcy.)
I suppose it's silly to "miss" an airline and I'm sure that, had I flown National more often, I would have had at least one of those nightmarish, "I'm never flying with them again" experiences. I'm talking about the kind of trips that kept me off Southwest for years — until the day that was the only airline that could get me where I had to go. Of course, they were fine then, which is good because it looks like that's how I'm getting to Las Vegas in the future. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry National is no more. It's always depressing when someone can do at least part of the job well and not turn a profit.