some things you should know about air travel. no matter how cool you think it is, no matter how normal you assume you can make it, no matter how much it’s just a hollow metal tube with wings on it… it’s completely unpredictable.
it all started with the outbound flight. apparently, when there are scattered storms in Houston, they scatter primarily around Bush Intercontinental Airport. This is important information to know, because apparently, scattered thunderstorms are major enough to shut down a major international hub for the better part of two and a half hours, diverting incoming flights to cities around the gulf coast and preventing anyone from going anywhere with those of us actually trying to get somewhere having absolutely no knowledge of why we’re not going.
and did i mention the gate changes?
so we arrived at the airport at 5:15 for our 6:35 departure. It had started raining, sure, but no biggie, right? so here’s the thing… when you get inside the airport, you don’t see the weather anymore. you just see screens with times and words like “delayed” and “cancelled” all over them. so after rushing around like a mad woman to get to the airport on time, the flight was delayed.
and then the gate changed.
and changed again.
and the flight was further delayed.
and the gate changed.
and changed.
and the flight delayed again.
and the gate changed.
and the gate changed.
and the inbound aircraft was finally on it’s way in.
and the gate changed one last time.
and finally, five hours later, we were loaded in the plane and sated with pre-packaged hamburgers and eventually, finally… the next day… arrived in california.
only to find out we were twenty minutes too late to have gotten any sort of transportation to anywhere near wher we were staying without the assistance of some incredibly unenthusiastic airline employees who had the least possible amount of empathy for our plight.
fan-f$&#ing-tastic.
straighten up and fly right