Rantings of a Lunatic

Washington Dulles has to be one of the worst experiences I have had at an airport. The airport staff are so qualified to be interfacing with customers I am vaguely surprised they are not volunteers. I don’t think the AC was on in the C terminal, and nobody even cared about the bird that was flying around inside. I arrived and departed from runway level stairs, which I have had enough of. They don’t have a tram system, they have giant diesel powered people movers, which are like giant living rooms mounted on a monster truck frame. No doubt they are as economical as they are ecological. And then there is my departure flight. At first we pulled out of the gate, while the flight attendants were giving their FAA mandated spiel that nobody pays attention to. Then as the rear attendant, Wendy, sat down the plane did a 360, and pulled forward the 200 feet back into the gate. Apparently there was a mechanic on-board who was needed to repair a plane in a different terminal. At first I would say what, but maybe there really is only one mechanic at this airport who is qualified to do some particular form of maintenance on a particular type of plane. Next issue, they burned up so much fuel on the false start 360 we had to stop and get more fuel. And to make it even better, the fuel truck is at a different terminal. By the time that we make it to the fueling station the captain comes on and says “our” mechanic is done with his repair project, (if it was that easy couldn’t someone else have done it?), and he was in the plane right next to us, so he would be able to make the flight afterall. Now we just needed to wait a few minutes for the fuel truck to arrive…
An hour late we finally started heading for the runway.

It pretty much just makes me think the airlines shouldn’t be subsidized or bailed out as often as they have been. If their service is so bad that people stop using them and they can’t pay the bills maybe they should shutdown and let someone else start a company in their place. If the cost of gas makes them raise their ticket prices, so what. Either the consumers using their services will pay it or they won’t. Why do we need the government assuming that responsibility and passing it on to the public as a whole? And if that is being done, does that mean the government is effectively buying stock in the airline? Can it eventually get a controlling share? Does it become a social service at some point? And if not, does it matter if people aren’t able to fly all over anymore? Let the airlines fight for a reduced number of passengers, because of the higher cost of the flight, I would bet that perks like customer service and meals on flights would pop back up. Delays would go down, both because of the decreased traffic and because the consumer would really be dictating who stayed in business.

Skip ahead two days, and we finish up with the trainings a little ahead of schedule, and took a ridiculus limo to the airport to begin what would be a fantastic voyage. As we checked in, Charlie and I were travelling together on this excursion, we discovered that there were delays ahead in Chicago. After cursing the heat and volume of the gate area we went to grab some food and wait the hour for our flight. Upon finishing choking down a bit of food we were treated to hearing Charlie and what I can only assume was a horrible bastardization of my name being paged to the plane where they were going to leave us. Which is entirely uncharacteristic for me. What makes the whole ordeal better is that once we were on the plane we sat at the gate for an hour. It was an Airbus A320 which had an enthusiastic staff, if you would consider Nazi prison guards to be pleasant hosts for the sabbath. There was a distinct noise that alarmed several people, and I felt was a surging hydraulic line, though I was probably biased by the distinct petroleum-based smell like brake fluid that seemed to pervade the air. Once we finally became airborne the flight was relatively uneventful. At least in hindsight. The end of the flight got a little choppy as we flew into the storm that was causing the delays at O’Hare.
O’Hare was interesting. I feel like I remember taking a tram there before, but we didn’t have one to take tonight. And though we were an hour late landing, and they were forecasting a two hour delay, we were boarding around 8:45, which was only about a half hour late. But this is when the fun really began.
We boarded the plane, and were in almost the very back of the plane. No big deal, I have been at the back of the plane for the 3 preceding flights it really only makes sense. Well, after the flight attendants give their mandated “safety” speech the stewardess comes and asks the man sitting a row forward and across the aisle from me if he would mind sitting in the exit row, to which he agreed. Though it wasn’t really necessary the attendant had said “I really need you to trade seats.” When I saw the two people who were going to be trading places with him I figured at the worst they were going to be annoying for the whole flight.
After we pull away, and we have taxied out to the runway the flight attendant says over the loudspeaker that “once again” all cell phones needed to be turned off. I didn’t realize it until a couple of shouts later that she was specifically talking to the inebriated woman whom they had asked to move from the exit row. The woman refused to, telling the person on the other end she was “in DC” and would be there in 6 hours. This set the stewardess into questioning mode, where she called the pilots and asked their opinion of the situation. Without any mention, our engines went from rapidly increasing, (we were literally turning to straighten out on the runway,) we made a directional turn and continued to taxi. As the terminal had been readily shrinking in the windows it was now gradually growing, but aside from the man across the aisle from me nobody seemed to notice that we were going back to the gate yet. When we arrived at the gate the pilot made an announcement about having to return to the gate but we would be on our way shortly. A couple of airline people boarded the plane and escorted the couple off the plane without incident, which surprised me. The woman was not falling down drunk, but was definitely belligerently inebriated, which I figured would cause a scene. I felt a little sorry for the guy, he looked exhausted, as if this was just a layover, and he had been delayed all day and he just wanted to get home.
In the end we ended up taking off around 10:20 I believe, which would be about two hours late. The rest of the flight has been smooth, and that brings me up to current as I am blogging this on my phone in flight and will post it when I get home. I will blog about my new phone soon, its a work phone, but its pretty nice.