Does Anyone See the Captain?

This was not a rhetorical question. A recent flight was delayed because we had only a first officer, but no pilot or flight attendant. The gate agent helpfully asked those of us waiting in the gate area whether we had seen either of these individuals, to much amusement (hearty laughter preceded the anxiety). In fairness, her aggravation was equal to ours. Fortunately, our tardy crew did appear, but not before clocking a 20-minute delay.

October Pink

You know you fly too often when you begin questioning flight attendants about their uniforms. Specifically if they will be donning their pink scarves this month for breast cancer awareness. I love the scarves and I will never understand why Delta refuses to sell this "uniform piece" (I mean I'd clearly be mistaken for a flight attendant if I sported the scarf with a pair of jeans). Nevertheless, I'm forced to conclude it's a bit sad that I actually look forward to the scarves to the point of inquiring after them.

Minor on Board

I recently returned from visiting one my oldest and dearest friends who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, which reminded me of one of my earliest travel nightmares.

My friend moved to Alabama when we were in high school and so close were we that shortly after she moved, I was invited to spend Thanksgiving with her family. So it was that I would participate in my first Thanksgiving weekend travel, flying from Detroit to Birmingham via Cincinnati on Wednesday morning and making the reverse trip Sunday night. As I was only 15, I would fly as an unaccompanied minor, with a flight attendant to greet me in Cincinnati and accompany me to my connecting flight. At least that was the plan. Instead, when my flight landed in Cincinnati well behind schedule, I found only one harried Delta agent. She was not expecting any unaccompanied minors and certainly wasn’t going to leave her post to guide me from one gate to the other.  I had never been in an airport by myself before, and certainly never been in the Cincinnati airport, period. With a late flight and a tight connection, I put to work my one previous travel lesson, “go, go, go” and streaked through the airport, sliding into the last open seat on the plane with moments to spare before the jet bridge was disconnected.

My flight Sunday night was the last one to Cincinnati, connecting to the last one to Detroit, a combination that I know now is absolutely asking for trouble. The only saving grace was that I had a decent layover this time. Delta, however, seemed content to chew off this cushion minute-by-minute until it became obvious to everyone except the gate agent that I would not possibly make my connection. When at last the gate agent was forced to confront the ugly truth of the matter, her solution was for me – a single, 15-year-old girl, to spend the night in Cincinnati. Tempers flared, time tick tocked, and the airlines called my mom. Her rage bordered on mania. “She’s a minor, a minor,” she nearly screamed into the phone. “You can’t do that. You can’t send her alone to Cincinnati for the night.” My friend’s father, Bill, got wind of the situation (word traveled slower in the days before everyone carried a cell phone), and took his anger directly to the face of the Birmingham gate agent. “I will drive her to Michigan myself before I will let her get on this plane,” he fumed. “Give me her luggage.”

Such a demand was not possible according to our friendly gate agent, the bag was on the plane, the plane was nearly ready, was I going or not? Oh, and no, the airline could not guarantee what would happen to the bag if I was not on the flight. Looking for the upper hand this typically calm and collected middle-aged accountant charged through the emergency exit, setting off alarms both literally and figuratively. And yet, it’s amazing what bold action can do. 

Suddenly, they realized they could hold the Detroit-bound plane for me. Of course they could, I was a minor. Why hadn’t someone simply said as much? Bill turned purple and sputtered, hugged me quickly, and saw me down the jet bridge. When I looked back he was jabbing his thumb into the desk, needing one final assurance that they would hold the plane. 

They were good to their word and when I reached Cincinnati, an entire plane of Thanksgiving travelers was waiting for me. It seems the flight had been boarded and ready to go when the call came to hold that plane; as the wheels didn’t go up in Birmingham until the flight from Cincinnati was scheduled to depart, the passengers on-board had been sitting for a very long time. I had never encountered so many dagger-eyes as when I slinked onto the plane and into my seat in Cincinnati.

Have One on Us (or not)

If you've paid attention to the travel news today, you may have seen that Delta Airlines lost its bid to trademark itself as "the world's most trusted airline." (There's not much to it, but here are the details if you're so inclined.) Now, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may have rejected the airline’s request on the ground that the motto is “not inherently distinctive, but rather is merely laudatory and descriptive,” but I'd like to further add that being the "most trusted airline" is a bit of a low bar these days.

For example, those who fly Delta regularly are no doubt familiar with the "Have One on Us" coupons that Delta offers as a consolation prize when a frequent flyer does not receive an upgrade. Until a few weeks ago, the coupons were good for one alcoholic beverage or one non-perishable snack. Then, very quietly, without so much as an email notifying flyers of the change, the coupons could no longer be used for a non-perishable snack.

I actually wrote to Delta about this, noting that among other things, the change seems to me to discriminate against those who do not drink, be it for reasons religious (Mormon, Muslim); health (transplant recipient, liver or kidney disease); or personal (pregnancy, family history of alcoholism). It's not that I feel entitled to a free snack. If Delta had merely discontinued the coupons, that would be the company’s right (as with all of the other, recent changes to the Skymiles program and benefits). The way they went about this just feels so sneaky and, frankly, mean that I can't help but be annoyed. Of course, Delta wrote back to assure me that they "fully cooperate with legislative agencies in order to ensure compliance with consumer protection and advertising guidelines."

Well that's a relief. But I guess the world's most trusted airline never was the one that invited passengers to "come fly the friendly skies."

Nightmare to Paris

Friends of ours are heading for Paris this week, for the first time with children in tow, which calls to mind the inaugural voyage my own family made together to the City of Lights...

Flying the entire family to Europe, my parents had purchased the cheapest tickets they could find, which meant connecting somewhere on the East Coast, rather than the direct, non-stop, overnight flight I had taken as a fifth grader. US Air had a beautiful sale that summer, and airfare for the entire family came in around $2000. (When I consider that I recently paid nearly that much for a single ticket to Europe, I am especially impressed.)

Afternoon storms are common in late June, and it was against the backdrop of one of them that we took off for Philadelphia. At some point during the flight my mother became agitated, checking her watch, whispering urgently to my father, and generally behaving strangely. Not long after I noticed this change in her demeanor, the captain came on the PA system and made the following announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed we’ve been circling for a while now. Unfortunately, there are strong storms over Philadelphia, there’s a ground stop at the airport, and we don’t have the fuel reserves to circle indefinitely. Rather than see what happens when the needle hits E, we’ll be diverting to Harrisburg. For those of you whose final destination was Harrisburg, it’s your lucky day!” The first three sentences may not be verbatim, but the last sentence, the one about the “lucky day,” that one still bounces around my mind, clear as the day it was spoken.

When we landed in Harrisburg, it was at a mostly deserted terminal, staffed by exactly one gate agent. She was not of the helpful variety. Shouting to make herself heard above the noise, she ordered us into lines and marched us, quite literally, onto a waiting Greyhound bus. We would not wait out the storm, we would not fly to Philly or to anywhere else. We would ride in a bus. Also, she told us, we would not stop in the bathroom, we would not purchase dinner, and we would not be reunited with our checked bags. I don’t believe any of these were options, as we hustled down one dank, cinder block corridor and up another. Checking our names off her checklist, this woman hurried us onto the bus and waved it off into one fierce storm.

As lightning flashed and streaked across the sky and hail pelted the windows, we passengers rode along, hungry, angry, and certain to spend the night on the hard, plastic chairs of the Philadelphia airport. While US Air was so cruel as to expect us to go without any kind of dinner, they were not so cruel as to give us a bus with no bathroom. Naturally, even this was not without flaws, as we discovered when my sister became locked in this tiny, stinking space. Onward we drove, through the Pennsylvania night, the crash of thunder mixed with a wail that I have always imagined was some not-so-distant tornado siren. Even a drive that feels interminable must come to an end and we soon piled out of the bus and into the jumble of irate passengers and soggy luggage haphazardly stacked curbside in the rain. 

Mercifully our bags were together and we staggered wet, hungry, and laden with suitcases into the airport. No fewer than several hundred passengers were packed into this space, half a dozen frenzied ticket agents sought to diffuse a day’s worth of insults, and the PA system squawked with unintelligible announcements. The time was 11:30, some three hours after our flight bound for Paris should have been wheels-up. And then, as though a gift from heaven, we heard the announcement: “Last call for boarding US Air flight 1778 to Paris. Last Call for boarding.” 

“THAT’S MY FLIGHT! HOLD THAT FLIGHT!” My mother shouted, elbowing aside the crowds and forcing her way to the counter. “I can hold it for 10 minutes, ma’am, and you’ll have to take your bags with you. It’s roughly a mile. Go! Run!”

He didn’t have to tell us twice. The four of us took off at a trot, willing the plane to be at the gate when we arrived. The security check point was closed; in the days before September 11, the workers just waved us through, encouraging us, “go, go, go!” Miracle of miracles, we made it onto the plane. Sometime after midnight we were officially bound for Paris.

Of course, nowadays, you'd simply be forced to spend a week in Harrisburg, so in hindsight I suppose we were lucky. What a thought.

On Hotels and Housekeeping

I am opposed to housekeeping in hotels. It's not that I don't like a clean room, as anyone who knows me can attest. I'm all for housekeeping on the front - and back - end of a hotel stay. It's while I'm actually checked in that I don't like it. The reasons are manifold, but essentially break down like this:

• I do not want my toothbrush accidentally sprayed with some type of cleaning solution, nor do I want to have to put it away each morning upon leaving the room.
• I do not want all of the extra pillows that I've relegated to the sofa or corner returned to the bed each day.
• I do not need new sheets or towels for a three-night hotel stay.
• I'm not super keen on strangers in my room, in general.

I have found that housekeepers are usually quite happy with this arrangement. One in Memphis recently enthused, "You're a blessing, dear!"

I especially love Sheraton's Make a Green Choice program, which rewards the no-housekeeping-needed traveler with a $5 voucher at participating food and beverage outlets or 500 Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints for each night the guest declines housekeeping service. I'm waiting for other hotels to follow suit...

Layover Luck

Today I was grateful for my 3+ hour layover. I was not one of the dozens of people on the flight to Detroit with a missed connection. The delay, however, now that was another story. Initially, it seemed to be a run of the mill mechanical issue, but as an increasing number of airline employees swarmed the desk, it was clear this was not merely a broken seat. In fact, the entire flight computer was done and the maintenance was far beyond the skill and scope of the employees at the regional airport: maintenance was on the way, but they had a drive of 100-odd miles ahead of them first.

The travel gods, winked, though, and the Delta operations people saw fit to appropriate the inbound aircraft that was supposed to head to Minneapolis for the Detroit flight. (Poor MSP people, they were already delayed when I arrived at the airport, so today was definitely not their day.) So now we had an aircraft, but could they get the jet bridge unhooked from the airplane? As the flight attendant said in response to the weird noises floating into the plane, "they have to try some different things today." I think that's a euphemism for, "I am as hopeful as you that this flight will actually depart."