exciting return
I had an exciting return trip. Got to the airport in plenty of time to drop off the rental car and get through security (pre-check line very short - regular line very long. All these vacationers who are "amateur travelers"…)
About 15 minutes before we were due to depart, we still hadn't started boarding, and they finally admitted that we weren't going to board for another 25 minutes. No problem I think, my connection is an hour; it will just be tight.
Right. 15 minutes pass, and they extend that to 45 minutes… Couple of iterations of this. Why can't they just admit that they don't really know when we're going, rather than making up numbers? It's like they're teasing us. I get up and stand in the line that is forming in front of the gate agents for rebooking. Then they decide they're letting us on the plane after all, and the gate agents stop rebooking, and start boarding. Now what? The expected landing time of this flight is now about 20 minutes past the expected departure time of my connecting flight. I decided to get on the plane, because Denver is a much bigger airport, so there would be more options, and getting closer to your destination is often helpful.
So we fly to Denver, and when we land, the flight attendant gets on the horn and tells everybody to please stay in their seats unless they are going to one of the following cities, not listing Boston, so that people with very tight connections can hopefully make them. But, I'm on my phone and it looks like the Boston flight hasn't actually taken off yet. So, I get up with the other tight connectors. My phone also, with a little prodding, had informed me the gate we landed at (51) and the gate I was targeting (43), so pretty close. I can't really run, but I have a mean power walk, so I hoofed it as fast as I could, and arrived at the gate where there was still an agent at the boarding pass reader. I said "have you taken off yet?" And he said "we're waiting for you", so I slapped my boarding pass on the reader (cleverly I had it in my hand already) and there were still a few people on the jetway who hadn't even gotten onto the plane yet. So they weren't exactly waiting for me, but I did get on, and there was even space in the overhead bins.
As soon as we took off for Boston, they started apologizing for the delayed departure, but it sure was a benefit to me!
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About 15 minutes before we were due to depart, we still hadn't started boarding, and they finally admitted that we weren't going to board for another 25 minutes. No problem I think, my connection is an hour; it will just be tight.
Right. 15 minutes pass, and they extend that to 45 minutes… Couple of iterations of this. Why can't they just admit that they don't really know when we're going, rather than making up numbers? It's like they're teasing us. I get up and stand in the line that is forming in front of the gate agents for rebooking. Then they decide they're letting us on the plane after all, and the gate agents stop rebooking, and start boarding. Now what? The expected landing time of this flight is now about 20 minutes past the expected departure time of my connecting flight. I decided to get on the plane, because Denver is a much bigger airport, so there would be more options, and getting closer to your destination is often helpful.
So we fly to Denver, and when we land, the flight attendant gets on the horn and tells everybody to please stay in their seats unless they are going to one of the following cities, not listing Boston, so that people with very tight connections can hopefully make them. But, I'm on my phone and it looks like the Boston flight hasn't actually taken off yet. So, I get up with the other tight connectors. My phone also, with a little prodding, had informed me the gate we landed at (51) and the gate I was targeting (43), so pretty close. I can't really run, but I have a mean power walk, so I hoofed it as fast as I could, and arrived at the gate where there was still an agent at the boarding pass reader. I said "have you taken off yet?" And he said "we're waiting for you", so I slapped my boarding pass on the reader (cleverly I had it in my hand already) and there were still a few people on the jetway who hadn't even gotten onto the plane yet. So they weren't exactly waiting for me, but I did get on, and there was even space in the overhead bins.
As soon as we took off for Boston, they started apologizing for the delayed departure, but it sure was a benefit to me!
This entry was originally posted at https://nosrednayduj.dreamwidth.org/96302.html. Please comment there using OpenID.