this is mine... Happening right now. The darn emergency raft decided to deploy while we were already boarded. Deplaned, now a 3hr delay to put it back in.
What airplane is that? My "Flight from Hell" from Washington National to KC International: 1. The crew's flight from Pittsburgh is delayed. We wait for two hours to board. 2. My employer only bought a stand-by ticket and the plane is full. A couple people agree to deboard in exchange for percs so me and some other dude can get on. I have now become part of the delay, albeit a minor one. 3. Captain appears at divider between 1st class and economy. He's visibly pissed. Because we're so full and it's so hot, we are already too heavy take on enough fuel to make it to KC (Airplane engines and wings like cooler, denser air). We will have to stop at Indy. 4. Before we push back, Captain says they've re-calculated and they can take on more fuel. We wait for the big tanker truck. 5. We take-off, probably three or four hours late. 6. We start descending way too early. We are landing at Indy after all. (WTF, then why did we wait for the damn tanker truck back in DC?) 7. We take the time to descend, land, taxi in and refuel on the tarmac at Indy. Mercifully, we aren't on the ground all that long, but this has added at least 45 minutes to our flight. 8. As we near the top of our climb out of Indy, the Captain announces there is weather in the vicinity of KCI. 9. An early summer storm arrives at KCI about 10 minutes ahead of us. We are "backed and stacked," placed in a racetrack-shapped holding pattern. At least we're not diverted to a whole other city. We do several circuits, we descend occasionally as other airplanes are cleared to land ahead of us (the "stacked" part). We probably fly the holding pattern 30 minutes or so but it seems like two hours. 10. Captain makes an awesome landing in light rain, low ceiling and low visibility. (This is probably not an automated Category III landing) 11. Though I'd mentally noted where I'd parked my car in the huge parking compound next to KCI, I can't find my bright red midsize sedan. There seem to be hundreds of similar cars. I thank gawd I hadn't brought by golf clubs with me. I'm reminded of Igor's line in Young Frankenstein, "Could be worse-- could be raining." 12. It starts to rain again, heavily. I find my facking car, but now I am soaking wet from head to toe. I start my almost two hour drive home. Surely, others have had worse. . .
Yowza. That's bad. So we're finally getting a new plane. New departure is 10:15p (originally 4:00p). Original plane finally taken out of service... Something we wish they had just done hours ago... I mean obviously something is messed up that it would just "pop" out on the ground. A few weeks ago I got back to ATL airport to get to my car to realize I had no car keys. Lost them. Somewhere. I still don't know where they went. Had to get a $100 taxi ride...
I've had two great flights from ATL to KCI. On one, the captain periodically announced the scores of a Chiefs play-off game, and on the second I was bumped up to 1st Class. So, there's good and bad-- hope the rest of yours is good.
My flight out of Chicago got delayed on Dec 30th. Arrive in Minneapolis, get on another flight Upgraded to first class for free Chill Arrive 2 hours late.
The guy next to me last night still ordered 4 Jack and Cokes. Hope he wasn't driving home at 1:30am that way lol
It used to be that a person could get drunker than a 100 married indians on board. A person would probably get arrested by TSA/HLS for that now.
