The trip did not start smoothly. I showed up at the airport Thursday night in plenty of time for my 7:45 flight, grabbed some dinner, got to the gate - and the flight was leaving at 9. Whatever, I had a book and an ipod. At 9:10 we were all sitting on the plane when they cancelled the flight. Shoes off, bags stowed, everything. Some important system on the plane wasn't working and couldn't be fixed that night. But since it was mechanical, they put us up in hotels. Woo!!
I was totally impressed with everyone's attitude the whole time. People giggled when the flight was cancelled and helped each other figure out what was going on while we waited in line for rebookings and vouchers. For some reason United told two women (a mother and daughter, somewhat clueless) that they couldn't get their room paid for because they lived close by. They had no way to get home, so two other women - strangers - agreed to room together so the others could have a free room. It was a good day for humanity.
And hey, I was happy - the hotel had cable and a nice comfy bed. My new flight didn't leave til 11:30 on Friday, so I had a nice relaxing morning, too.
3 comments:
That's the kind of attitude I expect at, say, Outagamie County Regional Airfield, but y'all east-coasters surprise me sometimes, ayup.
It's more than a little terrifying that they didn't catch a critical problem until you were all boarded and ready to take off. At that point, shouldn't the crew being doing triple or quadruple-checks of things? And not looking out the window for the first time to make sure both wings are still attached?
Yeah, I assume this was on one of those checks - the captain said there was a light indicating that the whatever-it-was system was malfunctioning. I want to say it was the inertial something.
Hey, probably this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system
No, I bet it was inertial *dampeners*, they're totally more important. Without them the plane can't make the jump to warp speed!
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Inertial_damper
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