it made me sort of nervous because i hadn't left myself much of a time cushion. i got even more nervous when the ticketing agent told me the flight was delayed by 40 minutes, because i only had a 55 minute window to make a connection in las vegas. she assured me the pilot was a fast flier and all would be well.
she lied.
forty minutes turned into more like an hour late boarding, but i still had confidence we could make up the time. sitting on the runway for two hours, however, waiting for your turn to take off, can really set you back beyond recovery. luckily, the time flew by thanks to my cool seatmates, devin and stephen.
devin is a returning peace corps volunteer, on his way home from two years in ukraine, and stephen is a carpenter/electrician/volunteer firefighter on long island who had saved two lives earlier in the day and was on his way to spend time with an uncle in oregon.
the fun and games are over, though, when a mechanical problem forces you back to the gate. (especially if you really have to go to the bathroom. which i did.) after a little more than two hours on the runway, we were right back where we started, except this time people were swearing and demanding to be let off the plane. the doors opened, the demanders left, and the rest of us got some yummy snacks and water to smooth things over. eavesdropping on a conversation between two flight attendants while i waited in line for the bathroom, i heard this:
flight attendant #1: we're bringing in some snacks and catering is going to bring extra bottles of water to keep people happy.
flight attendant #2: the usual snacks?
flight attendant #1: no, not the crap we normally serve. it's nice stuff. from a different airline.
the mechanical problem was a relatively quick fix, and approximately four hours after our scheduled departure time, we were off. we landed in vegas a little after 3a.m. and found ourselves shuttled to hotels and rebooked on flights leaving the next day. i was pretty cranky (ok, really cranky) by this point in the game, but the bed was big and fluffy, and i slept like a babe until people started calling me the next morning to figure out where i was.
as you might imagine, rebooking an entire plane full of people creates some logistical problems, and it resulted in an amazingly inefficient flight plan, about which i was not amused. i left vegas at 1 in the afternoon, flew to phoenix and spent a little more than two completely un-fun hours there...
before finally getting on a flight home, a full 20 hours after my original flight would have landed.
the silver lining? they put me in first class for the final leg, and this little pre-flight treat made it (almost) all better.
2 comments:
I love a story with pictures!
frances is that you in the fur? You're lucky someone didn't have a bucket of paint.
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