What did you do this holiday season? Hopefully spent it with loved ones and friends. I got to spend Christmas Eve and a portion of Christmas Day with my brother and fellow air travellers at the Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT). If you didn't hear the news, many
US Airways employees didn't show up for work, stranding thousands of passengers and lots of luggage in several cities. A brief chat from PBS news can be found
here.
"If you have time to spare, fly USAir" was one of the best phrases I heard someone mumble while standing in a 3+ hour line to exchange our tickets. Most people were quietly complaining, but a few people were quite outspoken. After about an hour of waiting and complaining, one angry family (with 3 kids) got so bad that they were pulled out of line and surrounded by police. What a wonderful Christmas they had.
The visit to PIT wasn't a total pain, as the airline was gracious enough to give us food vouchers and a room at the
Crowne Plaza hotel, a very nice place IMO. Other people I talked with around 19:00 at the airport said they got nothing from the airline, but the hotel did give them a discount rate. Once we received our replacement tickets, it was off to baggage claim, and another 2.5 hour line. With about 15 minutes to go, one of the tellers at the baggage claim desk walked out and announced to all people in line that if we were destined for Florida, our bags were already in North Carolina and would be at our original destination, Fort Lauderdale, in the morning. Well, isn't this just dandy? We're stuck in Pittsburgh, the 1 piece of checked luggage is in NC, and the partridge pooped on the pear tree. We stood in line and filed the claim anyways, hoping that wherever the bag was, it might reach its destination eventually.
The flight on Christmas Day was supposed to leave at 08:40 in the morning, and because of the huge number of cancellations, we were told arrive at least by 06:00 to check in and wade through the cattle herding pillars they call security. Anyone that knows me knows I don't do mornings, so I had the hotel call at 05:00, my alarm set for 05:05, and my mom call around 05:10 just to make sure we were conscious and moving. We arrived around 06:30, only to find out we had to stand in the ticket exchange counter line again (the same one we were at for 3 hours the day before). After 40 minutes, we finally venture forth to the counter and they give us stand-by passes for any flights to Orlando and first-class tickets that would leave PIT around 18:00 and get us into Tampa around 20:30 ... on Christmas Day. The careful reader (I'm not expecting any) will note that our stand-by tickets are for Orlando, not our original destination of Fort Lauderdale. After haggling with the exchange counter rep, I said we would take any flight paths that would end somewhere in Florida. Tampa was about 4 hours away from our final destination, Orlando at least 1.5 hours, and Ft Lauderdale about an hour, but I didn't really care where we ended up, just so long as we were out of PIT.
Stop trying to triangulate where exactly I was going!
Security was surprisingly quick and painless. We were told to only use our stand-by tickets, and rely on the Tampa tickets as a last resort. Okay...we will. The first-class security line took about 20 minutes to get through, so we were past that mess by 08:30. I stopped at the bar and had a breakfast bagel, but passed on the breakfast beer. Walking up and down the USAir terminal for flights to somewhere in Florida was annoying. We were able to get on stand-by lists, but had no luck actually getting on a flight. While waiting for an Orlando stand-by flight, my brother found a Ft. Lauderdale flight leaving 5 minutes later with more than enough room on it. Rushing to the gate, I throw our stand-by tickets at them and they let us on board. The flight is so empty, possibly due to security lines, that many people have their own rows. Five minutes before they shut the door, the gate agent comes back to say hi...and that the stand-by tickets aren't valid. Hmm...another twist to an already awesome adventure? No. I gave her the first-class tickets to Tampa and she said they wouldn't work. I explained the situation to her, and she said to stay on the plane, but if there were issues they would come let me know (and kick us off?). I called my mom before we left PIT just to keep her informed, and she called me back within a minute asking me to verify which flight I was on and where it was going. Apparently USAir didn't have this flight anywhere in their systems...cute. Oddly enough, it had the same flight number as the one on Christmas Eve that we were supposed to fly on. The plane took off, didn't turn around to kick us off, and we finally arrived in Ft. Lauderdale.
Since Ft. Lauderdale was our original destination at the start of this fiasco, we decided to go mull around the baggage claim area to see what it looked like. I really wish I had my digital camera with me. It was quite ridiculous how many bags were just lying around, available for anyone to just walk away with them. Our checked item was due to arrive on Christmas morning, and being after 15:00, we figured it was worth a shot to hunt for it. After searching high and low, here and there, and eating green eggs and spam, we found the piece in a corner under an escalator. The only broken item in it was a bottle of salad dressing, but since it was my brothers suitcase, I didn't worry about it too much. ;-)
Our experience ended with our arrival at the final destination at 17:00 on Christmas Day, only 30+ hours after our expected arrival time. We ate, exchanged gifts, went to the movies, then crashed. T'was a Christmas that I'll not forget. Perhaps this event will be remembered as the US Airways "Nightmare Before Christmas".
No...I'm not done yet. Christmas was on a Saturday. Sunday we went to church and mingled at the social afterwards, then I got to visit my Aunt and put on the computer geek hat as I installed Windows updates to her computer. Now I know why I absolutely loathe Windows. It took ~9 update cycles before there were no more reported "critical vunlerabilities". Then it wanted me to install XP SP1 (not a typo). I did this, rebooted, and ran another 4 update cycles before the Windows Update crud reported an all clear. I decided not to go with SP2 at this point, as I had been doing the updates stuff for about 3 hours or more, and didn't really want to put the effort into fixing stuff that SP2 might break (along with installing the plethora of updates for it).
Yum and the awesome maintainers, who work hard to get package updates out, have spoiled me with Linux. Do it once, and it's finished...not the M$ way of installing an update that is known to have problems.
On Monday morning, I didn't sleep very well. When I actually got up around 07:30, I felt dizzy, wasn't breathing well (wheezing), had a very bad headache, and a bad cough. It seemed similar to what Patrick had for almost 3 weeks. I was flying out the next day, so I really didn't want to fly home then deal with it, as USAirways would've stranded me in some horrid place where the medical staff would be less than competent. The walk-in clinic I went to luckily had an opening, but I had to wait for over 2 hours sitting in a chair, trying not to fall out of it. I did get up to get a drink several times, but each time I kept getting dizzier. The doc said I had chronic bronchitis, and gave me lots of goodies to treat it. I was cleared to fly, and luckily no problems occurred during the trip home.
Still awake/reading? Wow. So...was your holiday as exciting as mine? Want to trade next year?
Note: pardon any grammatical errors. It'll get cleaned up over time...maybe.
