Why fly? Lileks has a new bleat on air travel. It seems he was going to fly to the big blogger meeting in DC (My invite must have gotten lost in the mail), but his flight was cancelled.
The woman behind me in line started to talking to the uniformed fellow behind her - a navigator, I’m guessing. “Where are the storms?” she said. “Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, New York, all over,” he said, his voice indicating that he was in no mood to talk shop with the civilians.Hmm, I thought. Bumpy weather. Turbulence. Wonderful. We are now operating at 87% hoorah factor.
Back to the gate; I checked to see if the flight was on time, or if it had moved.
WASHINGTON DC NATIONAL AIRPORT 103 4:54 CANCELED
Huh?
Excuse me? That’s my plane -
Canceled?
I went to the gate, where the airline had posted a fellow carefully selected for his ability to make his irritation with customers quite plain. This had never happened to me before, so I was unclear on the next step. What me do? I said, in essence.
I have a training seminar coming up in Chicago in September. It's a ten hour drive from here, which I figure will save me two hours over flying, and at least 50 points on my blood pressure. I usually fly Delta, and if you fly out of Knoxville, it doesn't matter where you are going, you fly through Atlanta. I used to fly to Hawaii when I worked on Jahnston Atoll, and I had to go through Atlanta. When I flew to Cleveland, I went through Atlanta. When I flew to Dallas, I avoided Atlanta by flying through Cincinnatti, but my connecting flight was cancelled, and I got re-routed.
Through Atlanta.
The only time I didn't fly through Atlanta was when I flew from Norfolk Virginia to Knoxville. I flew through Pittsburg instead.
Posted by Rich at June 28, 2002 2:14 AM