aerially challenged

I've adjusted to the fact that I'm going to be a person who just has trouble with airlines. Remember that time I had to board last so that they could install my seat, or when I slept in O'Hare after having made an emergency landing in Cedar Rapids. Oh, and there's the time I was stranded in Houston when I missed my flight by mere seconds. And who can forget my trip home from Australia, that ended in a 4 hour drive with a car full of strangers from Dallas to Austin. So, it's no surprise when things go awry, and I've learned to just roll with it. Why did I expect this flight out to LA to be any different?

The first leg was fine, Austin to Phoenix. It was hot when we left, it was hot when we arrived, the flight was short and uneventful. There was something like a 45 minute layover and then we'd be off to LAX. Our flight was first delayed by a few minutes, then a few minutes more. Then they began the boarding procedures. And most everyone was thinking, here we go!

They would have been wrong.

After we'd all been sitting on the plane, at the gate, for about 35 minutes the captain comes on and tells us that there's a small problem. You see, an instrument in the cockpit that is encased in a glass casing has cracked. While the instrument works just fine, they can not fly with the cracked glass. The captain alerts us that the ground crew has rushed back to the hangar to remove the same instrument from another plane to install into this one. It should take about 20 minutes, and we'll be good to go.

Another 35 or so minutes later the Captain gets back on the horn to tell us that "this plane isn't going anywhere". And that we will all have to get back off the plane, but they have to figure out how to do that appropriately. We "sit tight" for another 20 minutes.

After we've deplaned, and are sitting back in the gate, people are angry. There is a lot of grumbling. They switch us to the next gate over, and in pulls a new plane. I think some people were sighing in relief that this hiccup wouldn't be too costly.

They would have been wrong.

We boarded this plane, or started to. The families with children and passengers requiring extra time got on. The bums in first class got on. And Boarding groups 1, 2 (me), and 3. And then, the halted this procedure as well. Turns out, our crew was about to time out and wouldn't be able to make this flight. Rewind, we all pour out of the plane back into the gate.

Cue the grumbling. It was like a stand-off. Angry passengers, annoyed gate workers, everyone yelling and snipping and moaning. I just curled up in a chair to watch. It was a sight to see. I think we sat here for an hour. Then, up rolls a flight crew - hooray. And we start boarding the plane. Many people seemed happy.

They would have been wrong.

Turns out, this flight crew had somehow arrived without a pilot. I'm not sure if they lost him along the way, or what, but we had no pilot. In fact, there was no US Air pilot in the entire airport at this time. In fact, they boarded us all on a plane without really knowing that. So guess what we did then? We all got OFF THE PLANE!

Now, it's a real mob-scene. I watched one gate worker lean over to another guy and she said something in his ear, and he was off. Pretty quickly he returns in a cart with boxes. Boxes full of snack-packs. And water. The scene that ensued was much like what you might imagine happens in third world war-torn countries when the red cross rolls in to pass out food and water. I mean, paper was flying, people were shoving. It was insanity - and we'd only been stuck for maybe 3 hours at this point. Stuck in the friendliest airport in America, mind you, with plenty of food courts, shops, and free wireless internet.

US Air called up a few pilots. I imagined those conversations went something like this:
US Air worker, "Hey, Joe, you wanna come in and fly this plane for us?"
Joe the Pilot, "Well, nah, the game is on and I'm kinda comfortable."
US Air, "But see, there's this mob of people, and they're quite angry."
Joe, "In that case, heck no! Call Bob!"

It seemed to take a while, but the gate worker was very pleased with herself when she was able to announce that they had located a pilot and he was in the building. Everyone began to cheer and clap and jump up and down chanting.

They would have been wrong.

Apparently once the pilot arrives to the airport he has one hours worth of preflight paper work to do?! Who knew. The cheers turned to grunts, and the gate workers tried to toss more water bottles around - hoping this would help.

After about a 5 hour delay, boarding and unboarding 3 planes, we finally had a plane with working instruments, a flight crew, a pilot, and were pulling away from the gate. I was waiting for the cheers, it didn't happen. The flight attendant announced that they were going to give everyone on board a free cocktail for our troubles. I waited for the cheers.

Forty-three minutes and one glass of red wine later we landed in LA. And that's when the crowd decided it was finally ok to cheer. Welcome to LA!