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Sorry, but I don't know what else to call this but a mess. It wasn't a disaster, after all. Just a pain in the behind. This is from memory, so I may be marginally off on details, but it should be fairly close. Wasn't that long ago.
I was in college in Iowa; each Christmas, the dorms closed for two weeks, as all of us were expected to spend Christmas at home. Home was, of course, as it is now, Oregon. This meant I got to make a fun six-hour flight each way at either end of Christmas break; but the break and the time with my parents was nice.
I don't remember which year this happened; not my senior. I think, maybe 1994; the dates look right. There was another girl at the school who was also from Oregon; and that was really all we had in common, actually. I hardly knew her; she was nice enough, from what I saw of her, we just didn't cross paths much. She was called "Fred" (after some discussion, we think her real name was Jennifer, but I'm not sure of that). Why she came to be called Fred I don't think I ever knew.
At any rate, this particular break, classes ended on the 21st (I think - maybe 22nd) and the dorms closed that night at 6 pm. Fred and I had both managed to get a flight out the next day; my dad bought my tickets a bit late, and she bought her own quite late. Our flight was the last flight out of the local airport, linking to the last flight of the day from Minneapolis to Portland.
Anyone see any potential problems here? Oh, good. You're perceptive.
They let us stay in the dorms overnight, and we arrived early at the airport the next day (why hang around campus?). There was one earlier flight out to Minneapolis, and we were trying to get onto it standby.
It didn't have enough room for that, alas (hey, a couple days before Christmas - we weren't really expecting, just hoping). But our luggage got on it.
Our flight was delayed, then delayed again, due to mechanical issues. It looked like it would finally leave about two hours late - guaranteeing that almost everyone on it would miss their connections.... They were recommending that we just go back to our homes. But wait! Remember that little note about the dorms being locked...? Yes, indeed. Fred and I had nowhere to go back to.
The lady behind the counter, when we got up there, looked very harried. About like I felt, times, oh, all the other passengers on the flight.... There's a job I would never want. She suggested we go home, because there was no way she could fly us from Minneapolis to Portland. I explained about the dorms, and asked if she could get us to Portland before morning, even if it meant going to New York first.
She hunted around, and said she could get us in at about 2 in the morning via Vegas. We said fine, that works. It gets us there. Called our parents and let them know.
So we flew a couple hours late to Minneapolis. Where we switched to a different airline for a little jaunt down to Vegas. Originally the flight from Minneapolis to Portland was supposed to be a dinner flight; none of these were. So we got what we could to eat (college students: what, I was supposed to have enough money for meals with me?).
I loathe Vegas. I loathe it. Gambling has no interest for me. I hate loud noises; I'm very sensitive to them. (Ask my friends, most of whom complain they can't make out the lyrics at the volume I play my songs...I can, just fine! I play music at work, and no one cares. It's not audible in the hallway from my desk....)
Las Vegas airport. After midnight. Was not the place for me to be. I was tired. My head hurt. It was almost Christmas and I wanted to be home. And the place was full of slot machines. Slot machines are very, very noisy. I would love to rip the arm off one and beat the designer with it....
My memories of Vegas are noise, a pounding head, the smell of coffee and the absolute lack of any place open at that hour to sell me a tylenol or a sandwich.
Then we get on the plane from Vegas to Portland. Same airline as from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Vegas, still. Remember that our luggage went out on the earlier flight? This is important: they had tried to retrieve it and have it rerouted onto our new flights, but failed. It went out on the flight we were supposed to be on from Minneapolis.
This was very, very good. The flight was not over-booked. But it was overloaded. Apparently freight, passengers, luggage, and carry-on was too much. They offered $100 for people to get off. They offered $200. They repeated that offer, then started threatening to start removing luggage until we were within weight....
Fred and I looked at each other, and just sat there. Tacky, I know, but it wasn't our luggage at risk! (Frankly, if it had been, I think I still would have sat there. I wanted to go home and eat and sleep.)
After a few moments, the woman sitting in the aisle seat on our row got up and took the $200 voucher. I could not have been more relieved. She had on the most awful perfume, and it had enveloped the area around her. I was not sad to see it go! She took off a box labelled "shot glasses" from the overhead bin when she left. Okay....
I think there was some more shuffling, but I sank into a half-doze, and eventually we were pushing back from the gate. A half hour or so late, but all the same, moving.
Then we got to Portland. And circled. And circled. You see, they scheduled a flight to land in Portland, Oregon, in December, at 2 in the morning, and then used a plane without fog-landing gear.
Can you say "stupid"? I could. I said some other things too, which probably don't bear repeating....
So we flew to Reno (it was closer) and landed. And sat there. Vegas has slot machines. Reno has video poker. We traded kathunk and kaching for beep and boop. It's questionable which is worse; the video poker machines were quieter, as I recall it, but shriller when they did sound.
I approached the airline representative, starving after an entire night on my cobbled-together dinner, at about 5:30 am or so (while we were still waiting to hear the fog had lifted and we could go back). I asked if I could get a voucher for breakfast. She said they didn't do that. I asked for a bagel, a muffin, anything, because it was due to their delay I wasn't eating at home. She blew me off. (This is actually the root of why I won't ever fly that airline again. Their lack of concern for screwing their customers over, to the point of denying a $1 pastry...well.)
They finally heard Portland was not fogged in any longer, and we took off. We arrived without incident at about 8 am. (Our original schedule had us arriving at 8 pm the night before....) Our parents, of course, had been at the airport since at least 2 am, because our plane circled before leaving, and then no one knew when it would get word the fog had lifted, so there was no schedule to the delay.
We went down to baggage claim. Fred's luggage was waiting for her. But since I hadn't been on the flight from Minneapolis to Portland (and apparently they hadn't kept track of their own blasted records in my case), mine wasn't. You see, they'd sent it back to Minneapolis on the first flight of the day...which had left about a half hour before I got to baggage claim....
They did drive it out to my parents' house later that day, I believe. I don't know. I had eaten and crawled into bed and hibernated by then.... But the luggage did appear.
I was in college in Iowa; each Christmas, the dorms closed for two weeks, as all of us were expected to spend Christmas at home. Home was, of course, as it is now, Oregon. This meant I got to make a fun six-hour flight each way at either end of Christmas break; but the break and the time with my parents was nice.
I don't remember which year this happened; not my senior. I think, maybe 1994; the dates look right. There was another girl at the school who was also from Oregon; and that was really all we had in common, actually. I hardly knew her; she was nice enough, from what I saw of her, we just didn't cross paths much. She was called "Fred" (after some discussion, we think her real name was Jennifer, but I'm not sure of that). Why she came to be called Fred I don't think I ever knew.
At any rate, this particular break, classes ended on the 21st (I think - maybe 22nd) and the dorms closed that night at 6 pm. Fred and I had both managed to get a flight out the next day; my dad bought my tickets a bit late, and she bought her own quite late. Our flight was the last flight out of the local airport, linking to the last flight of the day from Minneapolis to Portland.
Anyone see any potential problems here? Oh, good. You're perceptive.
They let us stay in the dorms overnight, and we arrived early at the airport the next day (why hang around campus?). There was one earlier flight out to Minneapolis, and we were trying to get onto it standby.
It didn't have enough room for that, alas (hey, a couple days before Christmas - we weren't really expecting, just hoping). But our luggage got on it.
Our flight was delayed, then delayed again, due to mechanical issues. It looked like it would finally leave about two hours late - guaranteeing that almost everyone on it would miss their connections.... They were recommending that we just go back to our homes. But wait! Remember that little note about the dorms being locked...? Yes, indeed. Fred and I had nowhere to go back to.
The lady behind the counter, when we got up there, looked very harried. About like I felt, times, oh, all the other passengers on the flight.... There's a job I would never want. She suggested we go home, because there was no way she could fly us from Minneapolis to Portland. I explained about the dorms, and asked if she could get us to Portland before morning, even if it meant going to New York first.
She hunted around, and said she could get us in at about 2 in the morning via Vegas. We said fine, that works. It gets us there. Called our parents and let them know.
So we flew a couple hours late to Minneapolis. Where we switched to a different airline for a little jaunt down to Vegas. Originally the flight from Minneapolis to Portland was supposed to be a dinner flight; none of these were. So we got what we could to eat (college students: what, I was supposed to have enough money for meals with me?).
I loathe Vegas. I loathe it. Gambling has no interest for me. I hate loud noises; I'm very sensitive to them. (Ask my friends, most of whom complain they can't make out the lyrics at the volume I play my songs...I can, just fine! I play music at work, and no one cares. It's not audible in the hallway from my desk....)
Las Vegas airport. After midnight. Was not the place for me to be. I was tired. My head hurt. It was almost Christmas and I wanted to be home. And the place was full of slot machines. Slot machines are very, very noisy. I would love to rip the arm off one and beat the designer with it....
My memories of Vegas are noise, a pounding head, the smell of coffee and the absolute lack of any place open at that hour to sell me a tylenol or a sandwich.
Then we get on the plane from Vegas to Portland. Same airline as from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Vegas, still. Remember that our luggage went out on the earlier flight? This is important: they had tried to retrieve it and have it rerouted onto our new flights, but failed. It went out on the flight we were supposed to be on from Minneapolis.
This was very, very good. The flight was not over-booked. But it was overloaded. Apparently freight, passengers, luggage, and carry-on was too much. They offered $100 for people to get off. They offered $200. They repeated that offer, then started threatening to start removing luggage until we were within weight....
Fred and I looked at each other, and just sat there. Tacky, I know, but it wasn't our luggage at risk! (Frankly, if it had been, I think I still would have sat there. I wanted to go home and eat and sleep.)
After a few moments, the woman sitting in the aisle seat on our row got up and took the $200 voucher. I could not have been more relieved. She had on the most awful perfume, and it had enveloped the area around her. I was not sad to see it go! She took off a box labelled "shot glasses" from the overhead bin when she left. Okay....
I think there was some more shuffling, but I sank into a half-doze, and eventually we were pushing back from the gate. A half hour or so late, but all the same, moving.
Then we got to Portland. And circled. And circled. You see, they scheduled a flight to land in Portland, Oregon, in December, at 2 in the morning, and then used a plane without fog-landing gear.
Can you say "stupid"? I could. I said some other things too, which probably don't bear repeating....
So we flew to Reno (it was closer) and landed. And sat there. Vegas has slot machines. Reno has video poker. We traded kathunk and kaching for beep and boop. It's questionable which is worse; the video poker machines were quieter, as I recall it, but shriller when they did sound.
I approached the airline representative, starving after an entire night on my cobbled-together dinner, at about 5:30 am or so (while we were still waiting to hear the fog had lifted and we could go back). I asked if I could get a voucher for breakfast. She said they didn't do that. I asked for a bagel, a muffin, anything, because it was due to their delay I wasn't eating at home. She blew me off. (This is actually the root of why I won't ever fly that airline again. Their lack of concern for screwing their customers over, to the point of denying a $1 pastry...well.)
They finally heard Portland was not fogged in any longer, and we took off. We arrived without incident at about 8 am. (Our original schedule had us arriving at 8 pm the night before....) Our parents, of course, had been at the airport since at least 2 am, because our plane circled before leaving, and then no one knew when it would get word the fog had lifted, so there was no schedule to the delay.
We went down to baggage claim. Fred's luggage was waiting for her. But since I hadn't been on the flight from Minneapolis to Portland (and apparently they hadn't kept track of their own blasted records in my case), mine wasn't. You see, they'd sent it back to Minneapolis on the first flight of the day...which had left about a half hour before I got to baggage claim....
They did drive it out to my parents' house later that day, I believe. I don't know. I had eaten and crawled into bed and hibernated by then.... But the luggage did appear.