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.

“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!

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

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.

Thousands of travelers spent their holiday weekend at airports waiting for flights that never took off, or looking for luggage in a sea of some ten-thousand lost bags, reports CBS News Correspondent Kelly Cobiella…

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.

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 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.

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)

Jim