Flying the Friendly Skies
Warning: Novel-length post follows.
I've determined that my trip to Michigan was doomed from the start. You may remember my saga from one week ago. The return trip was equally exciting.
The first premise you need to remember in this story is that the the people who fly out of the Flint Bishop Airport have never been on an airplane, or in an airport before. Knowing this will make the rest of the saga easier to understand.
Flint is a small airport. Just a handful of airlines, and about nine gates. Should be an easy trip, right? That's what I thought.
I get to the Delta counter about 50 minutes before my flight. Now 50 minutes is seriously pushing it at an airport like Atlanta Hartsfield, Chicago O'Hare or Detroit Metro. After all, at one of those hubs, it could take 30 minutes just to walk the mile to your gate. It's about 100 yards from ticket counter to gate at Flint, so I'm feeling pretty good with just five people in line in front of me.
15 minutes later, there are still four people in front of me, and the old guy behind me is bitching up a storm. Apparently, he's never been on a delayed flight, and he's freaking out.
10 minutes later, there are still three people in front of me. And random, non-line people are jumping in front of everyone to "just ask one question" at the counter. Their "one question" takes 10 minutes.
I finally get to the front of the line (15 minutes before my flight is scheduled to depart) and the annoying, bitching guy behind me asks if he can take cuts. "Sure," I say "Everyone else has, why not you, too."
Finally get to the front of the line. Ticket agent can't find my reservation. Then she can't find anything that says I've paid for my ticket (even though this is the return flight on a round-trip). Then she finally figures it out, ships me off to the baggage inspectors, and I'm off on my merry way.
Get to the security counter (5 minutes before my flight, but through the window, I see a plane at my gate, so I'm ok), and nobody there has ever been through airport security. Honest to God, this was the conversation:
SECURITY: Do you have any change in your pockets?
TRAVELER: Oh, I didn't know I needed to take that out.
SECURITY: Put it in the basket. Anything else in your pocket.
TRAVELER: Just my keys.
SECURITY: You need to take those out of your pockets, too.
TRAVELER: Really? I didn't know that!
SPORTSLADY: AAAAuuuuuuggggghhhhh!
Finally get through security, get to my gate (ten feet from security checkpoint), and find out that the plane at my gate is the 5:00 flight. My flight is the 6:00 flight. Both are delayed for unexplained reasons.
My flight gets moved to a different gate, we all move. we all wait. and wait. The plane was supposed to leave at 6:00. At 6:15, there isn't even a gate agent. Crap.
At 6:30, an announcement: The 6pm flight is delayed (no kidding). They'll update us on its status at 7:15! Some quick math tells me that there's a good chance I won't make my connecting flight in Cincinnati. After waiting for several minutes for a gate agent to arrive, I explain my problem. (In the meantime, a great deal of camaraderie develops between the frustrated travelers. We decide that if we all miss our connections and have to spend the night in Cincinnati, we'll meet at the hotel bar and get rip-roaring drunk on Delta's tab.)
Yahoo! The gate agent tells me that if it looks like I'll miss my connection, they'll put me on the AirTran direct flight from Flint to Atlanta!
I realize I won't have any time to eat later in the night, so I go to the airport lounge for a beer and a sandwich. Take two bites of sandwich, one swig of beer, and hear a page for me: "please report to the Delta Ticket Counter". That's right... the ticket counter where I stood in line for over half an hour. I put it off as long as possible (plus, I don't want to leave my beer and sandwich unattended). They page me several more times. I finally get some of my airport buddies to watch my beer, and head over to the ticket counter. This time it moves amazingly fast (and my dad was still at the airport, because he suspected something like this would happen, so I had company in the line). We say goodbye at security again.
This time, security moves equally slowly, and lucky me, I get red-flagged (even though I'd just been through all the same people just one hour earlier).
My beer was warm when I got back to the bar.
Fortunately, the flight was uneventful. There was one more mini-crisis... my baggage didn't show up on the carousel at Atlanta. The conveyor belt stopped, and a couple other people were left there standing and staring at the rotating luggage. Apparently, our luggage ended up on a different carousel than the other 150 people on our flight. Really, lost luggage would have been just the icing on the cake.
The kicker is that after all the delays, the waiting, the running around, I actually arrived in Atlanta 10 minutes earlier than my original flight plan. Go figure.
Warning: Novel-length post follows.
I've determined that my trip to Michigan was doomed from the start. You may remember my saga from one week ago. The return trip was equally exciting.
The first premise you need to remember in this story is that the the people who fly out of the Flint Bishop Airport have never been on an airplane, or in an airport before. Knowing this will make the rest of the saga easier to understand.
Flint is a small airport. Just a handful of airlines, and about nine gates. Should be an easy trip, right? That's what I thought.
I get to the Delta counter about 50 minutes before my flight. Now 50 minutes is seriously pushing it at an airport like Atlanta Hartsfield, Chicago O'Hare or Detroit Metro. After all, at one of those hubs, it could take 30 minutes just to walk the mile to your gate. It's about 100 yards from ticket counter to gate at Flint, so I'm feeling pretty good with just five people in line in front of me.
15 minutes later, there are still four people in front of me, and the old guy behind me is bitching up a storm. Apparently, he's never been on a delayed flight, and he's freaking out.
10 minutes later, there are still three people in front of me. And random, non-line people are jumping in front of everyone to "just ask one question" at the counter. Their "one question" takes 10 minutes.
I finally get to the front of the line (15 minutes before my flight is scheduled to depart) and the annoying, bitching guy behind me asks if he can take cuts. "Sure," I say "Everyone else has, why not you, too."
Finally get to the front of the line. Ticket agent can't find my reservation. Then she can't find anything that says I've paid for my ticket (even though this is the return flight on a round-trip). Then she finally figures it out, ships me off to the baggage inspectors, and I'm off on my merry way.
Get to the security counter (5 minutes before my flight, but through the window, I see a plane at my gate, so I'm ok), and nobody there has ever been through airport security. Honest to God, this was the conversation:
SECURITY: Do you have any change in your pockets?
TRAVELER: Oh, I didn't know I needed to take that out.
SECURITY: Put it in the basket. Anything else in your pocket.
TRAVELER: Just my keys.
SECURITY: You need to take those out of your pockets, too.
TRAVELER: Really? I didn't know that!
SPORTSLADY: AAAAuuuuuuggggghhhhh!
Finally get through security, get to my gate (ten feet from security checkpoint), and find out that the plane at my gate is the 5:00 flight. My flight is the 6:00 flight. Both are delayed for unexplained reasons.
My flight gets moved to a different gate, we all move. we all wait. and wait. The plane was supposed to leave at 6:00. At 6:15, there isn't even a gate agent. Crap.
At 6:30, an announcement: The 6pm flight is delayed (no kidding). They'll update us on its status at 7:15! Some quick math tells me that there's a good chance I won't make my connecting flight in Cincinnati. After waiting for several minutes for a gate agent to arrive, I explain my problem. (In the meantime, a great deal of camaraderie develops between the frustrated travelers. We decide that if we all miss our connections and have to spend the night in Cincinnati, we'll meet at the hotel bar and get rip-roaring drunk on Delta's tab.)
Yahoo! The gate agent tells me that if it looks like I'll miss my connection, they'll put me on the AirTran direct flight from Flint to Atlanta!
I realize I won't have any time to eat later in the night, so I go to the airport lounge for a beer and a sandwich. Take two bites of sandwich, one swig of beer, and hear a page for me: "please report to the Delta Ticket Counter". That's right... the ticket counter where I stood in line for over half an hour. I put it off as long as possible (plus, I don't want to leave my beer and sandwich unattended). They page me several more times. I finally get some of my airport buddies to watch my beer, and head over to the ticket counter. This time it moves amazingly fast (and my dad was still at the airport, because he suspected something like this would happen, so I had company in the line). We say goodbye at security again.
This time, security moves equally slowly, and lucky me, I get red-flagged (even though I'd just been through all the same people just one hour earlier).
My beer was warm when I got back to the bar.
Fortunately, the flight was uneventful. There was one more mini-crisis... my baggage didn't show up on the carousel at Atlanta. The conveyor belt stopped, and a couple other people were left there standing and staring at the rotating luggage. Apparently, our luggage ended up on a different carousel than the other 150 people on our flight. Really, lost luggage would have been just the icing on the cake.
The kicker is that after all the delays, the waiting, the running around, I actually arrived in Atlanta 10 minutes earlier than my original flight plan. Go figure.
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