The Eagle Might Land
I told you about the Death Flight from Hell, right? Well, wash, rinse, repeat.
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Yesterday’s American Eagle ATR 72 flight from San Juan to St. Thomas boarded about half an hour late because allegedly (a) they were late getting in from their previous flight, and (b) they had to go through customs.
Eventually we get to the runway and start rolling and… oh, an indicator light came on. We aborted takeoff. Again. Boy, doesn’t that sound familiar? We’ll just taxi back to a holding area and wait for half an hour while the pilots try to diagnose the problem.
No, that didn’t do it, we have to go back to the “gate”-actually a portable generator sitting alone out on the tarmac, a quarter mile from the terminal-and have a mechanic come on board to look at it.
Another half hour passes before the pilot comes on and says, in effect, “Well, we’re not sure why, but it works now. But if it comes on again, we’re going to ignore it. After all, it’s nothing safety-related… just the control of the flaps. Your safety is our top concern here at American Eagle.” Yeah.
So we taxi out to the runway, and wait. We’re number two to take off, but we’re sitting there for about fifteen minutes before the pilot turns back to the gate. The loudspeaker informs us that after all that sitting around, they happened to notice that the plane doesn’t have enough gas for the 20-minute flight to St. Thomas, and we need to go back to fill up.
More waiting! Brill! At least there was interracial lesbian schoolgirl action going on a couple rows ahead of me. Welcome to the islands!
From that point on, things actually went pretty well. We took off, and despite heavy rain, the short flight wasn’t too bumpy, and the landing was reasonably-and surprisingly-smooth. We got in late, but safe; although the sheer number of glitches makes me very happy that this was the last flight I’ll have to endure on American Eagle for a long, long time.