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My return flight from Charlotte, N.C., was supposed to touch down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport yesterday at 1:45 p.m., but because of “labor issues,” we didn’t take off until 2:00 p.m. That meant I was over an hour behind my so-called writing schedule. You see, every half-hour increment counts. But it’s only an hour, right?
After an uneventful flight, I go down to baggage claim to retrieve my well-worn green suitcase, and I noticed it was taking longer than usual. An hour later, I started to suspect something. I can be a little dense.
As other US Airways flights arrived and hundreds of people stood around looking at each other and no luggage, it was then I remembered hearing something on the news about a sick-out.
Bankrupt US Airways late Saturday blamed more than 300 canceled flights and thousands of pieces of stranded luggage on the aftereffects of a heavy winter storm and large numbers of workers who called in sick during the crucial holiday travel period….The disruption to thousands of travelers on troubled US Airways had the carrier scrambling and caught the attention of the U.S. Transportation Department, which told the airline to quickly straighten out its operations and its labor shortages.
The company and unions say there was no organized “sick out,” but workers at the seventh-largest domestic airline are bitter about huge wage and benefit cuts the company says are needed for the airline to survive. They are also angry at how the company has been managed through two bankruptcies in two years.
Senior Transportation Department officials, clearly irritated, kept unusually close tabs on US Airways operations as the weekend progressed. (Source)
I had no idea employees at the bankrupt airline decided to teach management a lesson by delaying my flight and my stuff. Very effective.
The whole thing was comical. Luggage was piling up in corners, but it belonged to people who’d arrived hours or days earlier and had given up and gone home. Not a good sign. The wait was entertaining at times as passengers cheered for each other when their bags came out.
Reactions to our predicament varied. Some cursed and fumed. Others waited patiently and quietly. Some paced from one carrel to the next. A few stood back and observed. I paced patiently and quietly, figuring everyone has to have at least one airport nightmare story, and this was mine.
Two-and-a-half hours later, it was all over and I was on my way home. Needless to say, I found several excuses not to write, none of which had anything to do with arriving home “off-schedule.” Nice try, though.
Because I was sort of trapped at the airport, I had time to think. In the scheme of things, waiting two hours for luggage is insignificant. Being blessed by God is significant. I got to spend time with my family, who are all safe and healthy. I’m a child of God. I live in a free country and can travel where I want, when I want. My love for America is bound up in my gratitude to God. One of my long-term goals is to travel from sea to shining sea, bearing witness to Jesus Christ. I’m prepared to travel wherever I’m called.
My well-worn green suitcase can bear witness to that.
Update: My two-and-a-half hour luggage delay was mild in comparison to what others experienced: lost luggage, missed flights, etc. Do you have an airline nightmare story to tell?
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I like this post. Very positive message from a not-so-positive situation.
Ala “Eastern Airlines” Goodbye!
Good post.
Bad move for US scAIR.
Next time you’re trapped in my fair city, give us a ring … you probably flew right over my house.
By the way, Virginia Postrel at dynamist.com has a scathing entry about US Air employees who think that the path to success in collective bargaining is to alienate the customers. I’m with her … let’em go out of business. Maybe someone competent will take over the 90-something percent of the CLT gates they lease, and the prices will come down.
This is why I fly on smaller airlines whenever possible. Midwest Express, Jet Blue, Southwest (not that they are so small anymore). I usually get a cheaper ticket, and I always get better service.
You’re always welcome in Oregon!
Same thing happened to my father-in-law attempting to come to Arizona from Philadelphia. They were quite sad about the mishap, and my boys were very disappointed not to see their grandparents. But in the end, it was a joy on Sunday morning for my 8-year-old to come into my bed and cuddle up to me and say “Daddy, this was the best Christmas ever!”
There is joy in this wonderful season we know not of. But patience and a true fatih in the One who made it all that he will bless the birth of his Son brings great peace and satisfaction.
I ran into the same thing coming back from Kuwait last year. At O’Hare, flights (American Airlines) were delayed and there ended up being three to DFW at the same time. My bags ended up in two different terminals, as did those of many others. We all waited at one terminal, and the man running that area got into a bit of an argument with a lady with her kids. He kept saying she had made an error, even though she did precisely what the baggage folks at Chicago had told her to do. I spoke up and he said, “This is none of your business!” I quickly retorted that it was, in fact, my business, and everyone else’s. And I said, “This IS Texas, and we don’t treat ladies like that here. He calmed down, and actually tried to help her.
I say regardless how bad it may seem and it may be tedious, long or at least seem that way it is still quicker than it was by train. Made the same trip from North Caralina to Washington D.C. once and it took 14 hours.
So all in all it could have been worse.
Mark
A thesis topic for some enterprising grad student: “Why labor union members adopt a ‘cut off your nose to spite your face’ bargaining stance.” (Thanks to Mom and Dad for teaching me that paradigm at age 8!)
This is something I never understood. Why does “Organized Labor” behave like this? Myself and a co-worker were talking about this very thing this morning, by the way I work in the aircraft leasing industry(The airlines don’t always own those planes) and we both could not understand it. During one of the busiest times of the year for air travel, why would anyone, much less a union stage an organized, or un-organized sick-out? USAir has been in Chapter 11 for who knows how long. They need every revenue dollar they can to keep going. If I were flying and this happenned to me, I would think twice about using that airline again. Which brings us Bachbone’s excellent quote. Looks like this kind of attitude could strike USAir employees out of a job completely.
And yes I grew up in a union family, so I am not totally anti-union. I am totally anti-stupid though.
When you think the company and the world owe you a job, you can no longer make a rational choice. That is part of the reason REAL MEN DON’T FLY!
Drive or don’t go. Railroads years ago, with their attitude of “Our way or the highway” blew passenger traffic away. Airlines with their history of monopoly privilege still don’t get it.
Right after the war, [WWII} some pilots bought surplus C-54s and set up non-sched airlines. $89 Frisco to New York, and the plane didn’t take off until it had a full passenger load. The scheds got that stopped, but it still seems like a good business model. When all the airlines go under, perhaps the unemployed pilots will bid for their old horses and give real enterprise a chance.
such a wonderful post. You must be such a joy to be around. Thank you for seeing so much good in an otherwise very unpleasant experience.
I did my flying in the sevenities and eighties and I didn’t fly unless I ,”Carried On “. I can remember even then I would be in my car and going while most people were still trying to get their luggage from the airline.
Jim
Last Christmas I said I would never fly UScareways again. But they had such a good price I couldn’t pass it up.
Ugh.
The passengers were in a good mood reguardless of not having their luggage and waiting forever in an airport.
Me, I couldn’t stand the waiting around. Last year they lost my luggage going to, and they lost my luggage coming back. I went carry-on only this year. (thankfully)
Sometimes it’s hard to let “little things” like that not bug you. It’s sometimes easier to turn to God and not fret with big problems than little annoyances or a series of little annoyances.
My husband got stuck overnight on a flight in the city where his brother lives, so he got an unexpected chance to visit. He was happy and the agent who reticketed him was suprised and asked why he wasn’t mad. Now, he is a Christian, too, but that wasn’t the reason he was happy about it–but it made us think, what a great witness it would be if you could be happy about something like that and have the reason be because of Christ and be able to share the gospel that way with both actions and words.
I avoid airports like the plague… lol
I didn’t have the pleasure of flying this season, thankfully, but I do have an airport baggage story to share — this was from a radio talkshow caller, a baggage handler at O’Hare, to the Johnny something radio show, Chicago, about 12 or so years ago.
Seems a lady from California had to change planes at O’Hare, enroute to Italy. She had a dog carrier on the plane, with instructions that she would pick up the pooch and hand-carry the carrier to her Italian airline flight.
The baggage handler (and caller) retrieved the carrier from the inbound California flight, and discovered the poodle inside the carrier was dead. Alarmed, he found his manager to find out what to do.
The manager had a bright idea. He sent the baggage handler to a large Des Plaines (a nearby suburb) Animal Kingdom store with instructions to purchase a poodle as close in coloring and size as possible to the dead pooch, to give the dog a tranquilizer, and then if the dog’s owner realized something was wrong, to explain to the lady that “all dogs act funny like that because of the tranqs and airplane noise, it’ll be fine when the drug wears off.”
The manager explained his rationale, that by the time the woman was certain it wasn’t her pet, she’d be in Italy and the problem would be out of their (O’Hare baggage) hands. They’d have dodged the bullet.
The subterfuge plan was executed, the baggage handler dutifully handed the dog carrier with purchased poodle to the woman, and the woman started screaming and shrieking as though she were being attacked by vampires.
Seems her beloved poodle had died in California, and she was taking its body home to Italy, for burial on the family estate.
My aunt, traveling from Copenhagen, Denmark to visit my parents in Salt Lake City in 1985 experienced her “airline nightmare”. Arrival at New York Kennedy Airport was fine except that her luggage was not there. It wasn’t on the carrousel. It wasn’t on a baggage carriage somewhere. It wasn’t on the airplane. In fact, it had apparently never been put on the airplane. She had no choice but to board her flight to SLC with nothing except her purse and that flight was delayed three hours.
After a six hour wait in the terminal the flight boarded, taxied in line to the runway, turned to proceed with takeoff and…turned around and headed back to the terminal. Something about some engine power dropoff.
OK! Back at the terminal, stay in your seats, we will correct the problem and will be taking off shortly. Uh, huh. Forty-five minutes later, “we regret the inconvenience, but we must ask everyone to disembark and wait inside the terminal until you are called.”
Three hours later they trundled forth another airplane, got all the passengers on board, and finally managed to get off the ground. They touched down in SLC five hours later, my aunt still luggage-less, and my parents who had received wrong information or misunderstood that which they had received, had gone home expecting her to arrive the next day. She simply decided to take a cab and, after an ordeal of some twenty hours, knocked at their door. They weren’t home. She sat down in the hall outside their door and waited. Two hours later they came home not a little surprised to find her sitting there.
I cannot do the story justice, you’d have to hear her tell it. She was in her seventies at the time, a widow, and had a great sense of humor. We laughed until we cried when she told us.
Oh, her luggage finally caught up with her three days later having been mis-sent to Taiwan. She always liked to say that although she had never been around the world her clothes had.
Great site — Enjoyed the stories
I’m glad that you were able to take stock and count your blessings in the face of aggravation, La Shawn. That’s something I don’t always do very well, myself.
I read about half of a Henry James novel at the Springfield, Illinois, airport this Sunday. It was nice to catch up on some reading, but still….
Our United Express plane was four hours late even arriving in Springfield to get us. The amazing thing, though, was that the United staff did not make one single announcement the entire four hours. And we couldn’t ask, unless we wanted to go back through security and wait in line at the United desk, which had a line out the door of people needing to be re-routed.
A staff person finally showed up at the gate, but only because another United plane had arrived. When it emptied and the United person announced that another flight (scheduled to leave after ours) was boarding, we asked the guy where our flight was. This was after we had been there about two and half hours. The United person started shrieking–literally shrieking–at us to get from him. He didn’t have time for this, and we were all just going to have to deal with it. It was so outrageous it was almost funny. All the passengers were being patient and polite; all we wanted was some information. What we failed to see, though, was that the whole situation was about the United employee, and not about, oh I don’t know, PAYING CUSTOMERS.
If these major airlines are circling the drain, I don’t think anyone has to wonder why.
Not a nightmare, although it could have been, if I’d let it.
I was supposed to fly from Atlanta to Dayton Ohio on 12/24 this year, then drive 125 miles to spend Christmas with my family. Dad called me about 1130 at night on the 23rd and told me not to come, because I would never get out of Dayton (I’m going for New Year’s instead, now).
I was ready to be all bummed about it, but decided that I could still choose what kind of attitude I had, and I wanted a good Christmas, regardless of where I spent it.
So I went down to the airport on Christmas Eve to rebook my flight, and took with me some bags of Christmas chocolate candy. Before rebooking my flight, I wandered through baggage claim, unclaimed baggage, lost&found, Delta Information, and the ticket counters, offering chocolate and Christmas greetings to every airport employee I encountered.
Went back the evening of 12/25 with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies for the airline staff. I knew that the large number of iratae passengers would have made for a really long day, and these poor folks had to work on Christmas.
I got lots of smiles that night, and one lady asked me if I worked for the airline. I told her no, I was just a satisfied customer who appreciated the chance to give a little back to the folks who’ve always taken care of me when I’m traveling.
It felt good. I’m still smiling when I think about it
Perhaps the funniest off-the-cuff line I’ve ever heard was delivered by an American Airlines employee in the Lost Baggage section at LAX one night. She was the ultimate in cool, calm customer service, but this one man was SCREAMING his displeasure over his lost bags endlessly while she amazingly kept her cool. Finally, she leaned over and with a just SLIGHTLY elevated tone to her voice told him this:
“Sir, right now there are only two people in the whole world who care about what happened to your luggage…and one of us is rapidly losing interest.”
Priceless!
La Shawn,
Wish I’d have known you were in Charlotte - I’d have treated you to breakfast at the Cracker Barrel
Sorry to hear about the extended time you had to spend at the airport but it sounds like you made the most of it.
As a side note, I wonder how much longer USAir will even be around. At the rate they’re going, probably not much longer.
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