I was 13 when I met a passenger who took care of me and treated me like a son. Before I tell my story, I must explain the background situation. I was on a flight from Beijing to San Francisco when engine #1 was on fire. Apparently a passenger discovered this and notified the captain. The captain didn’t know about this problem since there was nothing wrong with the instruments (he later announced this to the passengers). We had no choice but to divert back to Beijing and stay overnight while the aircraft got repaired.
The next morning, we returned to re-check in for our flight at 7am when we discovered that the check-in desks weren’t open. After 30 minutes of discussion with other passengers, we were notified that our flight (United 888) was renumbered to United 888A since another flight was flying out of Beijing numbered United 888. After going through security one more time, we finally managed to board the plane. Although the plane left Beijing uneventfully, I couldn’t sleep because I kept having thoughts of the engine fire from yesterday and the cramped seats didn’t help either.
After we finally arrived in SFO, we were told that we needed to uncheck and re-check our bags to take the connecting United 888 flight to Los Angeles. After check-in, my dad had to separate from us because we had to do extra screening and he didn’t. I was already tired from not getting any sleep so extra screening made me feel more exhausted. After the extra-screening, I boarded the plane feeling sick.
The flight was full and I was seated away from my parents. The woman who sat next to me noticed that I wasn’t looking and was kind enough to ask me if I was OK. I lied to her that I was fine and she continued to read her book. When we began to push back, she removed a tin of candy from her bag and gave herself a piece before offering me one. She told me that it would help my ears from the air pressure and it would make me feel a little better. I politely refused her offer and she told me to call her if I don’t feel comfortable.
After take-off, I couldn’t hold it back and I vomited in my air sickness bag. When the woman who sat next to me saw this, she reached into her bag and handed me some tissues and told me I should clean myself. Then, she pressed the call button and told the flight attendant to get me a cup of water. After I dealt with my mess I thanked her and told her about my flight story from Beijing (the one I mentioned above). She handed over her air sickness bag and told me to use it if necessary.
For the remaining thirty minutes of the flight I managed to get some shut eye and felt a lot better when we arrived in LAX. Before we left the plane, my father and I thanked her for taking care of me. She hoped for the best of me and left the plane.
Tagged as:
pilot,
united airlines,
vomit
About 4 years ago my wife and I were returning from visiting family in Los Angeles. This was the experience that convinced me to avoid US Air and the Philadelphia airport at all costs.
The flight from LAX to Philly was not a problem. We had an 8:30ish connecting commuter flight to our little hometown. My wife was giving an exam the next day in a course she teaches so we booked our flights to ensure we’d be home reasonably early Sunday night. So we get to Philly on time, shuttle over to the commuter terminal and wait to board our flight. Things are going smoothly and we board on time (around 8:00PM). As we taxi to the runway, the lights in the little propeller plane flash off and on. The pilot announces, “Well, that’s not supposed to happen. We think we know what’s wrong and it will be a quick fix. They’re sending someone over to the plane to fix it.” After about 30 minutes, it’s not what they thought it was and we are going back to gate.
No problem we’re told (it’s now about 9PM), they are getting us a new plane. We need to stick around because they will have to issue us new boarding passes at the new gate since we’d already boarded another plane. The plane arrives at the gate, we line up to get new boarding passes, all seems well. Suddenly the gate door opens and the crew emerges and says, “This plane is not flying anywhere.” We are advised that there are still a few seats on the regularly scheduled 9:45 flight and we should go to the nearest gate agent to get rebooked. Chaos ensues. There are US Air gate agents everywhere, standing in groups, walking alone. But virtually none are manning a ticket counter. And none seem interested in helping us out. Two are cajoled into helping and we line up 15-deep at two opposing gates. My wife and I are third in line, but our gate agent is taking forever with the first customer. Tap, tap, tap, tap goes the keyboard endlessly, but he can’t figure out how to rebook the passenger. Too late, the 3 available seats go to the first 3 people in the other line (9:45PM).
The reluctant and apparently incompetent gate agent now asks the remaining stranded fliers if they want to be rebooked on a flight the next day or would they like ground transportation (a 4 hour drive). About 10 folks want ground transportation (I would have taken the flight the next day and head to a hotel, but my wife wanted to give her class their exam and not be pushed back further), so we join the ground crowd. We’re told to wait while they rebook the other passengers (10:30PM). OK, now the gate agent turns to our group and says “stay right here, I need to go get approval to arrange ground transportation.” The guy is gone for an hour (11:30PM). Around 11:30 he reappears and tells us the ground transportation is approved and they are arranging for a bus to take us to our destination. It will pick us up outside the terminal in front of the airport.
We head to the pick up spot and wait another hour and half. At about 1:00AM the bus arrives. It is a “party bus” designed for nights out. Bench seats around an empty (of course) bar, we pile in as best we can and most fall asleep somewhere down the road. We got to our hometown airport at 5:00AM. My wife’s class was at 9:00AM. I slept most of the day.
I know mechanical problems happen, but what really made this a flight from hell was the unwillingness of most of the gate agents to try to help us. There must have been 15 in the terminal but they literally ignored what was going on. Then, of the 2 that reluctantly helped, one didn’t know how to do anything. He was the same one that took an hour to “get approval” for ground transportation. And never once did they tell us we’d be waiting an hour and half after that to actually board a bus.
What a night. Haven’t been in that airport since and haven’t flown on that carrier since.
Tagged as:
delay & cancellation,
gate agent,
pilot,
US airways
We were returning from a wonderful vacation in Greece in early May. We left the states two weeks after the volcano starting erupting. I had checked Delta’s website every day since the volcano started erupting and there was only 1 day when either of our flights outbound or returning were delayed by the volcano. That one day only had a delay of about 1 hour. I guess the JFK to Greece flights were able to fly far enough south that they were not impacted.
Anyways, our day started off very early in Santorini. We were up at 4:30 am (8:30 pm EST) to catch a 7:00 am Aegean Airlines flight from Santorini to Athens. It took the ticket agents 30 minutes to check in our bags because they were having computer problems. Not a big deal because we had plenty of time at the airport. After rebooting the computer systems, they were finally able to check our bags in all the way to our final destination which was Columbus, OH (CMH). We board the flight, which although was listed at 45 minutes, is only about 25 minutes actual flight time. This flight was no problem. We head into the airport which was fairly quiet, grabbed breakfast, and spent our remaining Euros on baklava and other stuff to take back to the States.
We eventually head to our gate for our 11:10 am departure to JFK. Granted we are a bit early, but I know that the flight from JFK is supposed to land at 9:30 am. Nine-thirty comes and goes and no plane and no announcement of what is going on. The plane from JFK finally lands about 11:00 am. I am a little worried because we have a 4 hour layover in JFK. This normally is plenty of time to clear customs and make the connection, but I am hoping for the best. It is close to 12:30 pm when we finally board. Once everyone is on board, the doors are closed, and we pull back from the terminal, the captain comes over the intercom to update us. The inbound flight was delayed because the ash cloud had drifted south and the flight had to go south of Portugal to avoid it. Unfortunately, the ash cloud had continued to drift south, so going south is no longer an option. We are going to have to fly north. And by north, the captain says north through Europe, north of the Volcano/Iceland, over the polar ice cap, then south through Canada and finally into JFK. He estimates this is going to add 2 hours to our flight time, making an 11 hour flight now a 13 hour flight. And to make matters worse, there is a very narrow flight corridor available for all of the flights out of Europe and we will have to wait on the ground for 1½ hours before we can take off and hit our flight window. There goes that wonderful 4 hour layover.
The pilot comes through the plane to talk to the passengers and answer questions, which I thought was a nice move. He is explaining to almost all the passengers that the computer will automatically rebook everyone for the missed connections and there should be someone on the ground to explain the options once we clear customs. Oh and that Delta will pay for everyone who needs one to stay in a hotel. Right. Like I believe that. He does have the flight attendants do a limited drink/snack service. I am sitting in row 25 of the plane, so about 10th row of coach. When the flight attendant reaches my seat, I suggest that they turn on the entertainment system so we have something to distract ourselves with and not keep harping on the attendants. She thought this was a great idea and said she would look into this. I can’t believe none of them thought of this. They do turn the system on and we settle in for a wait. I think we finally took off from ATH around 2:30 or 3:00 pm. The flight itself, while long, wasn’t bad.
We land in JFK around 7:30 pm, right when our connecting flight is supposed to take off. Oh well, off to customs. I have to say this only took about 1 ½ hours, which is the fastest I have cleared customs in JFK. Oh, I should mention that the zipper on my checked bag is now broken. It was fine when I left Santorini so many hours before. On to the Delta desk to recheck bags, get rebooked on flights for tomorrow. There are only 2 or 3 agents working the desk and the line looks like it will take at least 2 hours. I am trying to call Delta or my travel agent on my cell phone, but there is very spotty reception down there. After we are standing in the line for 30 minutes, I look over at a flight board, and lo and behold, our connecting flight to CMH has been delayed to 10:30 pm. We still have time. I flag down a Delta agent to make sure the board is up to date. It is. We head upstairs to ticketing to recheck our bags there. Of course we can’t use the self check kiosk and upstairs is near bedlam. A very nice Delta agent walks us up to the front of the self check area and tries to get an agent there to recheck our bags. She is complaining because the bag tags were wrapped around the handles, but we quickly get that sorted out and our bags are rechecked. We head to security and clear that after about 45 minutes. Again, still have time. We get to our gate and there are 7 flights heading out of our gate within a 1 hour period. I ask at 2 separate gate stands if we have to recheck in since we came from Athens, were delayed, etc. but still wanted to catch our flight. All agents say no, just have a seat and wait.
Well there are no announcements by Delta, but the time of our flight keeps getting delayed by 30 minute increments. The only way we are aware of this is by checking the board by the gate. There are Delta personnel all around but no one seems to know anything. I finally find out there has been rough weather on the east coast and the inbound plane from DC hasn’t left DC yet. Boarding finally starts around 12:15 am for the flight home. We get to the gate agent and she says our boarding passes aren’t for that flight, which of course is wrong because it clearly says that flight. The computer had rebooked us for a 9:35 am flight the next morning out of LaGuardia. I tell her that I had checked with 2 different agents and they told us we didn’t need to recheck, that we were on that flight. She said there was room and we would get on the flight. We are the last 2 to board. Once on the flight the pilot says there will be an additional 1 hour delay because of the construction at JFK. There is only 1 runway open. I think we were 15 or 20 in line for take off. By this time I am beyond exhausted. I haven’t slept at all. I tried taking an Ambien on the flight from ATH, but it didn’t work. I don’t know when we finally took off, but we finally landed in CMH at 3:30 am.
Luckily our bags came through fairly quickly. I go to talk to the Delta baggage agent about my broken zipper and she says that it is not Delta’s responsibility but that I will have to file a claim with TSA. Whatever, I just want to go home because I still have a 1 hour drive ahead of me. I drop my friend off at her house and finally get to my house at 5:00 am. I have basically been up for over 32 hours. I am happy to be home but completely exhausted. Luckily I had taken that day off and didn’t have to go in to work. All in all, the worst travel experience I have ever had.
- Kelly
Tagged as:
aegean airlines,
airport,
baggage,
delay & cancellation,
delta airlines,
gate agent,
pilot,
weather
I make my home in SE Alaska, so our only carrier is Alaska Airlines.
On a southbound trip out of Sitka, I was seated in a window seat on the left side, just behind the wing. As I settled into my seat for the short flight, I noticed an anomaly on the left wing. You’ve probably all seen those small pods that are attached to the trailing edge of the wing. I’ve since discovered that they’re called “flap canoes.” Their purpose is to house the machinery that controls the extension and retraction of the flaps, those movable segments on the back edge of the wing that can be extended to provide essential additional lift on takeoff and landing. The canoes themselves are streamlined to offer less drag, and they taper to their rear.
Well, I noticed that the back half of the canoe housing was missing and that I could look up into the innards where the flap drives were located. I didn’t think too much about this, figuring that the flight crew knew what they were doing. Surely the plane had been given a walk-around inspection before flight and had passed. We took off and the flight down to Ketchikan was uneventful.
About ten days later, I was once again traveling out of Sitka, also southbound, and was seated in approximately the same position on the left side of the plane. As I took my seat, I realized that I was on the same aircraft as my previous flight, since the flap canoe housing on this plane was still missing on its rear half; the trailing portion of the canoe had not yet been replaced! I had the same view of the machinery inside the canoe, still exposed to the Alaskan elements.
A couple of the guys around me also noticed this defect and we were discussing it when the flight attendant came by. We told her that part of the plane was missing and inquired if this was safe. She said she’d question the captain about it. She returned a couple minutes later with the message that the pilot had said everything was OK, the rear portion of the housing “was not necessary for flight.” Afterwards, we were all joking that they should just remove the other one, too, in order to balance out the aircraft.
Alaska Airlines pilots are among the best; they have to fly in terrible weather. But you wonder a bit about an aircraft that goes unrepaired for ten days…
Tagged as:
alaska airlines,
flight attendant,
pilot
