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Be concerned when the captain comes on the p.a. with a 'Well folks..."
After circling over Manchester, UK for 45 minutes in a holding pattern waiting for the fog to lift. "Well folks, this is your captain. The good news is that our fuel situation is now such that we will definitely be landing shortly, hopefully in Manchester." (got send to the head of the landing queue and did in fact uneventfully land at MAN instead of diverting)
Just after a landing at GRR as we were stopped waiting for the snow plows to clear us a route to the gate "Well folks, if any of you felt your ears pop more than usual as we descended, it was because the plane did suffer from a decompression event at that point, but we were fortunately low enough that the oxygen masks didn't pop out."
At the gate as boarding was finishing up "Well folks, we're going to have a delay for a while here because the baggage train just hit a wing, and the on-call mechanic for this outstation that needs to inspect for damage is about 45 minutes out from arriving at the airport."
I think I've told the story of the Atlanta pimp hotel a few times elsewhere.
US Scareways. Philly to West Palm Beach. Take two of the lower forms of humanity, Philadelphians and Floridians, get them drunk and mix them up on a plane the smelled like a locker room, and thats the ingredients for a b a a a a a ad flight.
People were angry after over an hour wait, then a move/mad dash to another terminal. People were puking drunk, cursing and almost fighting over other people taking too long to stow their luggage . . . It was horrifying. It took me a while before I risked US Airways again after that experience.
1/ Flying once from Midway (Chicago) back to Oakland, on a Friday night (flight was scheduled for departure at 7:20 PM) after a week on business in Chicago. My phone started receiving texts from Southwest of flight delays. I went to the Southwest counter and they informed me that my aircraft did not take off out of BWI, due to weather related flight delays.
We finally departed at 12:20 AM, on Saturday morning, 5 hours later. Completely ruined my weekend, as I arrived home at 4:00 AM on Saturday morning.
2/ Flying from Bangkok back to San Francisco, via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific. My bag did not make the transfer and arrived the next day.
3/ Had to transit once at O'Hare and my scheduled transit time was 40 minutes between flights. My flight was delayed 30 minutes and when I arrived at O'Hare, I had 10 minutes to frantically run across the airport to make my connection. I arrived just as the aircraft doors were about to close. Luckily, I'm in great shape. Someone not in such great shape would have never made it.
Flying from Boston -> NYC -> Paris for a conference. Up most of the night before finishing my work, so reached the airport quite tired. Flight delayed a bit.
Our flight was shared by dozens of 10-12 year old French-speaking boys who had flown to the States for an international youth soccer tournament. Now they were flying home. They were sitting in the row behind me. And to the left of me. And in front of me. 10 year old boys. Everywhere.
So what did these bored boys decide to do all night during the flight?
They would wait until I would fall asleep, and then kick my chair. Or pull my hair. Or blow on my face. It was so simple, so juvenile. And it literally almost drove me insane. I was so exhausted. The poor woman sitting next to was being similarly tortured. Can you imagine when we tried to complain to the stewardess? "These little boys are pulling my hair....." They looked at us like we were crazy. We begged to be moved somewhere else in the plane, but there were no free seats except in first class. For a brief while, I hid in the bathroom and cried.
And when I arrived in Paris, my luggage was lost. At 5am. I got it back 2 days later.
I have not returned to Paris. I hear there are French boys there.
A comedy of errors, if you please, but not significantly "bad" as in "disaster", just a LOT of inconvenience!
I flew Continental from Tampa to Providence RI {the ariport closest to home on the Cape, although I could have chosen to fly out of/into Boston}, with a stop in DC, I was supposed to fly "straight through" the first week of February, oh, about 1989-1990.
When we got to DC, It was only raining. The pilot was supposed to be on a flight in from Buffalo, NY {which was in a blizzard},and the Co-pilot was supposed to fly in from Syracuse, NY {also in a snow storm}. They were LATE. IN DC, the planes have to be "done" flying {cleared for takeoff or landed} by 10PM so as "to not disturb the President" I was told.
We WERE supposed to land at 6:30pm and take off again at 7:30pm. BY 9:30PM they loaded us back on the plane in prep for clearance for takeoff by 10Pm deadline, and they were trying to bring in a crew from Baltimore on a short flight to get them there for our flight out, instead of the Buffalo Pilot and the Syracuse Co-pilot...They offered us Champagne to "calm our nerves".... the only time I've ever been offered free booze on a flight. I was sitting at the window over the wing and the luggage door, and I saw the roller belt truck pull back up and thought, 'Please tell me they forgot to add luggage?". I was WRONG, they started taking luggage back out, I said to the guy next to me "we aren't going anywhere tonight". He asked how I knew...and I told him they were taking the luggage back off the plane. HE was shocked!
They decided To put up the "through travelers" from Tampa for the night, but NOT the "originators" in DC. This caused a near-riot as many lived in RI or close, and travelled only for the day to DC, and had no place to sleep. They decided anybody who needed it, would be put up, and called in vans to take us to the hotel.
Now comes the hard part for me. I HAD 5 different people who COULD have picked me up at the RI airport that night, but NO ONE AVAILABLE the next day when I would get in on the early flight out! Furthermore I had a dear friend waiting in RI at the airport with a "Little Brother" of mine, waiting to pick me up. I called my roomate at home and told her what was going on, but none of us had cell phones at the time,so it was impossible to contact my waiting friends. They found out when the board at RI said "delayed' and then went to "cancelled'. WHen they got home my friend called me at the hotel at 2 AM {I knew it was her or my roomate again as I had called my roomate again to tell her the hotel name and phone number} and She said "you're dead"...I protested it wasnt' my fault! AT ALL! {she had gone to the airport at 5pm to be early to pick me up at what should have been 8:30pm,so they waited and waited until 11:30 pm when they changed the sign to "cancelled",then verified that my plane was not coming!}
The next day I landed in RI and virtually was miles yet from home WITH NO ONE TO PICK ME UP, and found out to rent a car and turn it in at home was equal to the cost of the flight, unless I wanted to bring the car back to RI. I called a travel agent friend at work {who had arranged my FL trip}AND SAID HELP! how do I get home? SHe said take a taxi to the bus station, I will have a ticket waiting for you! I took the bus to the nearest city to home, and a cab home again, and had to break in a window to get in the house as NO ONE was home,and my friend had my keys as she was using my truck to come get me the night before! Everyone was at work and wouldn't be home for hours!
I was tired, exhausted and NOT in a good mood when I got home!
Comedy of errors, I said. Thank your for this rememberance.
Travelling from Venezuela to the US I had a 5 hour layover in Aruba with my two little kids
F..... Aruba airline plane was late as f.... and I missed my flight to the US.
I was stuck in Aruba for 3 days with my kids.
Sounds nice and fun, except that Aruba is very expensive, I was lucky to find a person's house (through my cousin) where I was charged $50/night.
My worst to date involving a flight was last July coming from DFW back to EWR. Flight was delayed about 20 minutes due to thunderstorms making their way across the country, west to east. We get on the plane and are delayed almost an hour on the tarmac due to a medical emergency on another plane that was taxiing ahead of us, so all flights were grounded. We're somewhere over North Carolina when I realize I have seen the sunset to our left about three times now. We were circling. Soon after, the pilot comes on and tells us that due to thunderstorms, we had to circle because Newark wouldn't let us come in to land until they passed. We circled for probably about an hour and 45 minutes.
We were supposed to land at about 8:30, we landed around 11:15 in a drizzle, everything was soaked on the ground so it clearly had rained pretty hard. It was pretty miserable but I know it could have been so much worse in many different scenarios. I just hate planes, need to drug myself to get on (Xanax), so spending any more time on them or in the air than necessary just completely sucks for me. I was getting very nervous as we were circling. The seatbelt sign was on almost the whole time, too, because of pretty bad turbulence due to the storms in the area. Almost forgot, we actually flew right through one - watching lightning flash outside you in a plane is thrilling, I have to admit. I got some cool video that night.
Worst travel experience was when a cab never showed up at the hotel to take me to the train station in St. Louis, and I was planning on being there an hour early. Ended up missing my train to Chicago, and had to settle for Greyhound. That made it a close call to get my connecting train back to New York, but the bus made it in time. I've learned my lesson and will always be two hours early now and just hang out in a station.
Other then this, things have gone very smoothly and I travel by train a ton. I don't consider Amtrak delays an inconvenience, just more time to relax on a train, which I enjoy. Have never missed a connection or lost a bag.
At the gate as boarding was finishing up "Well folks, we're going to have a delay for a while here because the baggage train just hit a wing, and the on-call mechanic for this outstation that needs to inspect for damage is about 45 minutes out from arriving at the airport."
.
it was the catering truck in Atlanta that dented the side of the plane for my plane collision story and a two hour wait for the dent measuring to be completed before getting permission to take off.
Also had the vacation trip to Alaska from Austin with a unpublished stopover in San Antonio. Bad thing about that was we had driven from Austin to Poteet (south of San Antonio) to drop off kids with grandparents and back to Austin to catch the flight. Then when in San Antonio the plane loses both main and backup compasses and we sit in the gateway for three hours. Not allowed to stay on the plane nor go into the concourse.
The worst flight, however was a return from San Francisco to Austin on a mixed carrier flight. It started with Delta on the way west and the return was with Northwest. Got to the counter to check-in and was told I misread my departure time and was very late. The counter agent grabbed my bags and walked me past security (pre-911) and straight onto the plane carrying my bags for me to plane side checkin since there was no time for checked bags to make the flight. Turns out the agent misread the departure time and instead of putting me on the plane to Salt Lake City for my connection, he put me on the flight to Las Vegas where there were no Austin bound flights for the rest of the day. The gate agent there tried to place me on other flights to eventually route me home but no luck. Northwest finally bought me a Southwest ticket since they had no reciprocal agreement in place to do a ticket swap.
I did get home, but none of my luggage ever did. Southwest told me that Northwest still had it (no ticket swap so no bag transfer), Northwest said Delta had it since they sold me the original ticket, Delta said Northwest had it since they checked it at plan side. Delta finally had to pay me for the luggage Northwest lost, but it was some really nice bags that I could not replace with the same models. I haven't had any quite as nice since then, everything in the same price range is now all soft side cloth with plastic latches, zippers and straps inside. No more metal clips, zippers or latches. Lighter and "prettier" but not as durable.
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