Every so often, a rant about travel comes across so wrong-headed that it deserves to be held under the microscope for scrutiny. Charles DeLaFuente, one of the New York Times’ in-house stable of journalist-bloggers, wins that honor thanks to a recent post. It’s notable for its misguided attempt to assign blame for a travel mishap to all parties other than himself. But nonetheless, travelers, airports, and airlines can all learn from his account, both before and after his flight.

DeLaFuente and his family missed a JetBlue flight at Newark Airport. He blamed the airport’s (and airline’s) lack of sufficient signage to help him find his gate:

Jet Blue has two gates in a concourse also used by Continental, but only Continental has signs at the security area that leads to its seven gates in Terminal A, along with monitors showing the departures from them. Jet Blue has nothing there to alert passengers that its gates lie in that concourse, too.

Granted, I would have seen the Jet Blue counter and the monitors showing gates 21 and 22 if I had entered the terminal on the upper level, where anyone dropped off by private car or taxi, or with bags to check, would normally arrive.

But many passengers enter at the terminal’s ground level, where shuttle buses stop. And if, like me, they have no bags to check, they go up the escalators and emerge at the security checkpoint without ever passing the Jet Blue check-in counter. That’s where it can get confusing. There are three concourses in the terminal. Behind which one do the Jet Blue gates lie?

When I read this, I thought, “You have to be kidding me.” Newark’s terminal A is divided like a split level house. The upper level is a short, half-level escalator ride from the level where you enter security. If there were no flight monitors immediately visible (…aren’t they also at security?), then a few steps up the escalator, and voila.

This photo appears to be from the C-terminal, if I’m not mistaken, but the basic architecture is the same, and should gives you a sense of the distance involved between the top (check-in) and middle (security/gates) levels at Newark:

And when you reach the top of the escalator on the check-in level, there are monitors listing the flights (this image is from Terminal A):

So, I’m sorry, it’s really not that hard to find your flight’s gate at Newark.

But DeLaFuente’s rant gets worse:

I arrived at the terminal with my teenage son and daughter about 30 minutes before flight time, then spent about 10 minutes searching for the right concourse and maybe 10 minutes waiting in the security line.

Hold on: DeLaFuente left himself only 30 minutes from the moment of arrival to the moment of departure? At Newark? When he didn’t know where he was going?

Sure, the airlines will tell you to arrive early and to leave abundant time for your flight. And there are plenty of us who leave less time than the recommended 1 hour+ cushion, especially if we know the airport well. (The TSA’s security line wait time estimator is unfortunately down for the time being, though when it’s up, it can be of help in planning things, too.) But 30 minutes at Newark, one of America’s busiest airports, is begging for trouble. I’ve spent nearly that long in security lines there.

To his credit, DeLaFuente raises a few valid points. Jetblue could have been nice and let him standby for the next flight without charging him extra, instead of upcharging him. Their customer relations staff should have written back to him when he sent a certified letter of complaint to their CEO (which was the wrong way to escalate a complaint, but that’s another issue…). And Newark Airport and Jetblue should, yes, consider placing monitors differently, or in more places.

But I find it nearly impossible to show sympathy for someone who arrives 30 minutes before departure from Newark, isn’t capable of taking an escalator up a half flight of stairs, and won’t take any responsibility for his actions.