More Air Travel

Yesterday was not a very successful travel day. I was supposed to fly to Charlotte and then Asheville. I wake this morning still in Charlotte. After two delays we finally boarded our plane and went promptly into standby on the edge of an active taxiway for another hour. We then flew to CLT, where we were allowed to land but the field was closed due to lightning. Thus, we sat on the plane for another hour. 

Once I finally got out into the airport, I found that my remaining flight had been delayed as well. I had some hope it might leave near midnight, but no, they finally canceled it. Weather related, so of course the hotel is on me and not the airline that turned two short flights into a two day ordeal. 

Somehow the majesty of flight has become a very unpleasant chore. I dread air travel, but once in a while I have to get on a plane. It’s such a crapshoot as to whether it’ll be on time, or nowhere near so. 
on

7 comments:

  1. Assistant Village Idiot8:05 AM

    It's definitely the most annoying and anxiety-producing part of travel. I keep thinking I want to go places, then find the reality making me question whether it was worth it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. E Hines3:00 PM

    The best part about flying for me is when I have the stick. I'm a terrible passenger in the car, and I'm not much better on an airplane.

    Eric Hines

    ReplyDelete
  3. Grim5:17 PM

    I did manage to get home today, after 25.5 hours of trying. They incurred a large backlog of people trying to make the jump, so I didn't get a flight to AVL until 1 PM.

    Amazingly, that flight takes 19 minutes. It's astonishing how hard it is to get from CLT to AVL given how short the flight is. It's usually fine in the morning, but by the afternoon the weather is heating up, electrical storms brewed up in the mountains are driving down from the west, airline delays have piled up, mechanical errors have cropped up, and so forth. If I have to transfer from CLT to AVL in the afternoon or evening, I am probably going to be stranded overnight. But it's a four hour drive to CLT, so I can save a lot of wear and tear on my vehicle as well as time if I can make it work.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gringo6:18 PM

    I haven't flown for 8 years. Don't miss it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous7:28 PM

    I was very, very fortunate on my last European run. Everything went well, and I missed the CloudStrike mess by four days.

    Like Eric, I prefer flying when I'm in the left front seat.

    LittleRed1

    ReplyDelete
  6. David Foster9:17 AM

    Very fortunately, the CloudStrike debacle does not seem to have impacted the systems that are used by air traffic control.

    ReplyDelete
  7. David Foster9:19 AM

    Delta Airlines is talking about suing CrowdStrike because of their losses incurred on account of the problem. But what procedures did Delta have in place to test software prior to mass deployment? Did they simply allow all vendor updates to just flow through directly to operational systems?

    Also, what were the terms & conditions to which Delta agreed as part of the CrowdStrike purchase?

    ReplyDelete