Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Time to Spare?

I have not been traveling much in the last year, but I used to fly at least once a week. Yeah, it got old. I like being home more now. But, now when I have to fly, it is more painful because I am not in the mode. As I was delayed in Nashville tonight on the way home, I got to thinking about a saying I have always believed true: "Time to spare? Go by air."

Of course, that is not literal, because most of the time, even with delays, an airline flight gets you there faster.

But not always. Tell me your worst airline story. I love hearing these and think I could write a book. I have a million of them from all the flights I have taken. I will tell you my best one. It always wins in the worst flight contest. Here goes:

I was flying from Atlanta to Dallas, normally a 2 hour flight. We left on time, 6pm, got to Dallas and circled for ages because of tornados on the ground. We circled so long, we were running out of fuel. We flew to San Antonio, got refueled and sat on the tarmac waiting for the weather in Dallas to clear.

It eventually did, we took off, everyone cheering, and flew back to Dallas. Meanwhile more tornados moved in and we circled Dallas again. UNTIL WE RAN OUT OF GAS AGAIN. And we went back to San Antonio. By this time, the passengers were ready to mutiny. The flight was completely full, not one empty seat, so there was no room to move around. They did not let us off the plane, drove by the terminal so we could see wall to wall bodies all over the floor, told us there were no hotels in the area with rooms, no rental cars, etc. There was no food on board, because it was supposed to be a two hour flight. Oh but they had alcohol, which they handed out liberally. Do you think that helped the problem?

We waited on the plane for a couple more hours, flew back to Dallas. We arrived at 6am. A two hour flight took 12 hours. I had to reschedule the 8am appointment I went there for.

I did get a letter of apology from Delta. That made it all better.

What's your best airline story??
Normal Girl

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Oooh, hard to top that one, especially as an infrequent flier. I went from Tri City to Lansing to Grand Rapids to Chicago once - never did level off, just up and down. Took Amtrak from Denver to Chicago, does that count? At least in an airplane bathroom, you don't see the railroad ties whiz by when you lift the lid.

M.M. said...

They handed out alcohol liberally? Wow, that is one brave crew! LOL!

Leylane said...

Hi, I just wanted to say that I really like your blog !
My "best" airline story? My english is not very good, but I'm going to try to explain it ;). I was in Finland, and it was a flight from Rovaniemi to Paris. First, we had to wait more than two hours in Rovaniemi airport because there where no plane... We were supposed to travel with XL airways but we finally had a plane from another spanish company, two hours after. But there were a problem in the plane that we had, and during nearly all the flight (more than 3 hours), there were a loudly nonstop noise in the plane "bip, bip, bip", as if someone had spend all the flight to press the buttom you press when you want to ask for something to the crew. All the passengers were very irritated...
And when we finally arrived in Paris, I saw on the thing where you take your luggage back (I don't know the word in English...), my deodorant... And just behing, my suitcase that was torn...
That's it, I hope it's understandable ;).