Time Travel Airlines


I hopped on a plane in Austin Sunday for a 3 hour flight to San Jose. I arrived at my destination Monday evening, some 27 hours later, like I had stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone. Where did my extra 24 hours go? Here's what I remember.

I arrived at the Austin airport around 5:30pm Sunday for my 6:20pm flight. Cut a little closer than planned, but the stop at Amy's Ice Cream on the way to the airport was not negotiable. The weather was sunny, a little warm, but not unusually so for Austin in August. At checkin I discovered my flight was delayed--the 6:20pm departure was now scheduled for 8:30pm. Really glad I made that Amy's stop now. The Elvis (mexican vanilla ice cream, bananas and Reese's peanut butter cups crushed in!) was keeping the delay in perspective.

Sometime after 8:30pm we finally took off. The nearly full plane was very warm and stuffy, but I figured as soon as we got to cruising altitude the air conditioning would kick in. Unfortunately the temperature in the cabin continued to rise, dragging the irritability level of the passengers up with it. After about an hour the pilot announced that the air conditioning on the plane was broken, apologized for the heat, and said he was turning the plane around so we could land and get a replacement plane for the trip. But we were going to land in Dallas rather than Austin, probably because replacement planes might be more plentiful in the larger DFW airport than in Austin.

Normally a flight straight from Austin to Dallas would take 45 minutes, but our route towards San Jose and back took over 2 hours for that hop. With no air conditioning. When we landed in DFW things were in disarray. There was no airline representative to meet us with directions to the replacement airplane. In fact, as a plane full of people milled around the gate it was clear the airlines was taken by surprise by our presence there, and I began to suspect we weren't going to make it to San Jose Sunday night. Sure enough, after an hour of milling the airline announced that our flight was cancelled. We were to spend the night in Dallas and the airlines would put us on various flights the next day.

Along with the hotel vouchers came the announcement that we would not get our checked bags off the plane. No toothbrush, no change of clothes.

At the hotel I discovered that I had been booked on the 2:39pm flight the next day (Monday) from Dallas to San Jose. I brushed my teeth that night with a free toothbrush from Colgate distributed at the hotel checkin desk.

By the time I was up and dressed Monday morning the 2:39pm flight from Dallas to San Jose had been cancelled. The airlines booked me on the 2:19pm flight back to Austin. From there I would catch the 6:20pm flight from Austin to San Jose. This re-revised itinerary was executed as planned. During the layover in Austin I stopped at Amy's Ice Cream in the airport to kill some time (mexican vanilla ice cream with Reese's peanut butter crushins!).

I arrived in San Jose on Monday almost exactly 24 hours later than originally planned. I was tired, but I didn't have visions of alien probes or anything.

I wish our plane with the broken air conditioning had returned to Austin rather than stopping in Dallas. If we're going to get stranded overnight it would be preferable to be stranded in the city of origin rather than some other city. And if we're being stranded overnight it sure would be nicer to get our checked bags off the plane so we'd have more supplies available during our unplanned stay.

Any airline could have scheduling snafus and equipment failures all in the same day, turning a planned 3 hour trip into a 27 hour odyssey. I don't want to embarrass this airline by mentioning them by name. Let's just say it was an American Airlines.

Posted: Tue - August 3, 2004 at 12:08 PM        

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