The Pilot’s Gamble: How It Starts

Here’s a story for you, about a flight I took from Pittsburgh to Rochester (Minnesota) that connected through Chicago. (As always, this was years ago. Years from now, I’ll tell stories from today. And I’ll still say, “Years ago…”)

Anyway, the story:

I arrive at the Pittsburgh airport, get checked in, and I head to the monitors to see my flight status. I should have an hour before boarding. The monitor says Delayed. Craaap.

Well, that’s a surprise. Delayed?? But, lemonade from lemons, right? I take the opportunity to head to an airport restaurant for some fried food since I have the time. About a half hour later, I’m wondering if I can have dessert when I feel an urge to check my flight status again. I pay my check and head back to the monitors. We’re no longer Delayed; we’re Boarding. How does that even happen?? We must be flying under the radar on this (see what I did there? Hee, hee) because I didn’t even get an alert. Still: Double Craaap!

I rush off to my gate and board the flight without passing Go or collecting $200.

Once we’re all on board, they close the doors and we taxi. And then we stop. And we wait. And we wait some more. The pilot comes over the speakers and says that there are storms ahead and they were going to cancel our flight so he thought he’d take a chance and get us all on board and away from the airport so they’d have to let us fly, right? He tells us that we just need to sit here for a bit and see if Air Traffic Control will let us go.

Since it’s so murderously hot outside (it’s late June), the pilot asks us to close the shades (no more looking out the window, which kills my entertainment plans) and he asks that we use the air conditioning as little as possible to conserve fuel. Craaap again, and though I’m not usually big on lots of air conditioning, we’re now like a can of sardines sitting in the sun. Yick.

But soon enough, the pilot’s gamble works and we are taxiing to a runway and then we’re skyward and one our way to Chicago. It’s clear, sunny skies the entire way. Yes, you read me right: No storms, nothing. Lucky us.

We get to Chicago and deplane and I head to the monitors to see the status of my connecting flight. It’s cancelled. Triple Crap, seriously? And there’s more: I come to find out they cancelled the flight back when I was sweating in the plane on the tarmac in Pittsburgh waiting for Air Traffic Control. Meanwhile, my family is in Pittsburgh—a cancelled flight there is no biggie; I get to go home for another day and pick up another flight. Now I’m in Chicago—Will I sleep in the airport here? I look at the hard blue carpeting around me. Oh, craaap.

Okay, so what to do?

Well, it’s pretty cool actually: The gate attendant tells me I get to use the Red Courtesy Telephones. I feel so James Bond and I’m not even sure why. The lady on the other end of the Red Telephone—I can only guess she’s a spy—tells me they’ll book me on another flight. City after city, airport after airport, flights are either booked or cancelled.

I say, “But my luggage is going through to Minneapolis. How do I get that back? I can’t fly separately from my luggage.”

“Says who?” the Lady Spy asks, amused.

“TSA in Rochester. They told me that last week.” (Another airline story with a notable character I dubbed Attila. I’ll share that story at some future point.)

“It’s checked. You can fly without your luggage,” the voice on the Red Phone says.

It’s at this point that I say something pretty dumb like, “Is there an airport in Wisconsin?” Forgive me, my Wisconnie friends, but at this stage of the game, my head is spinning. Of course there are airports, and they’re not all shut down due to storms. But to really set the scene, you have to imagine me looking around the airport as I say this, as if the walls will tell me.

“Yes,” the Telephone Spy says, “Which one would you like?” And she starts naming cities and I stop her when she says La Crosse. I know where that is.

“La Crosse,” I say, a little loudly because I’m latching onto it like a safety line and Spy Lady books me on a flight tonight.

I then arrange for my original ride home from the airport to come pick me up from there. They say, “That airport is only an hour from here. No problem.”

And I’m feeling pretty accomplished--that sweet, elated feeling you get when things are about to go very wrong.

[Click Here for Part Two of the story.]