A Million Miles and Screw Ups

Today is a big day. Flying somewhere over Idaho I will reach a million miles flown on United Airlines. I think my dad may be more excited about this than I am. However when I stop and think about it, it really is pretty cool and I am very blessed to have seen as much of the world as I have. That being said, a HUGE portion of my million miles have been accumulated going to see our family in the east. I figure there is no better way to hit a million than on, yet another, one of those trips.

Mom and my routing to see Granny and Pop and the rest of the family in New Jersey is EUG-PDX, PDX-IAD (Washington DC for you non-airport code folks), IAD-PHL (Philly). This is actually a pretty nice way to go. You have to leave Eugene at 6 am but the connection in Portland is super minimal and the equipment from PDX-IAD is a 757 which means an upgrade is highly likely (there are 24 first class seats). The flight from IAD-PHL is super short, like the EUG-PDX flight, so most of the travel is very comfortable.

Our flight from EUG-PDX was quick and easy like usual. I was really hungry when we landed so I decided to grab an egg salad sandwich on our way past the newsstand in Terminal E. For any of you who travel through PDX and like egg salad, I highly recommend that sandwich. We then proceeded to our gate where our flight was already boarding.

I fell asleep as soon as the plane took off. On my million mile flight I didn’t see any sky. I woke up when the wheels hit the ground upon landing. I suppose this was fitting, in the sense that I’m certain I have slept for at least 500,000 of the miles I’ve flown. I didn’t get a bottle of champagne like dad upon his million miles, but I didn’t ask for one either.

We had an hour or so layover in DC. We hit up the Red Carpet Room for some snacks and the restroom. We then made our way to the commuter terminal A. At IAD the easiest way to move around the terminals is to ride a funky little tram/truck/shuttle like thing. On our ride over I was telling mom how this flight to Philly never works out well for me. “Mechanical” problems have caused me to miss two flights to Europe, made me really, really, really late for Christmas Eve dinner coming home from Europe and a few other little domestic mix-ups for good measure.

We made it out to gate A3. Our flight boarded a few minutes late but the gate announcer still “promised an on-time departure”. As soon as he said that I should have considered it the statement of doom. Instead a few of us in the line just laughed.

We finally progressed out the doors onto the little commuter tarmac. At this point an angry man in a yellow vest wanted us to wait. We were like, okay this will take two seconds. Turns out we had to wait for a fueling truck to move so that they could put the oversized carry on cart out by the entrance to the plane. This wouldn’t have been a big deal but it was 90 degrees and kind of sticky in Washington on Thursday. Many of us were dressed in winter clothes from the cold destinations where we started our days. We ended up standing outside for a good ten minutes. Thinking about this now, that’s not THAT long but at the time it sure felt like forever.

Boarding the plane felt like entering Dante’s Enferno. It was like an oven in there. The engines obviously weren’t running and that 90 degree outside air was not circulating at all. I wish I had had a thermometer to measure the inside temperature. We sat with the cabin door open for an unusually long time. I wasn’t looking at my watch, YET, but I’m guessing it was in the neighborhood of another 10 minutes. The captain finally came on and said we had a “weight” problem. For an experienced travel, especially on little commuter jets, this is code for someone is getting kicked off the plane. Shortly thereafter the gate agent boarded the plane and asked for two volunteers to take a later flight. One guy was interested. He took his stuff and deplaned. I told mom we should consider the offer but then it was revealed the next available flight was tomorrow night at 10 pm. We are only in Philly for three days, so this didn’t make sense for us. The gate agent then “randomly” selected a passenger and told her she had to get off he plane. She was pissed and rightfully so. The strange thing about this weight issue was that the plane wasn’t even full to begin with. Normally if they kick someone off a flight it’s because there is bad weather, they need to take some extra fuel and the plane is packed to the brim. Not so in the case. Once the woman collected her belongings and deplaned, we were finally on our way to Philly.

Or so we thought... after taxing out towards the runway we sat, sat and sat some more. It was nice because we finally had some air moving so at least the profuse sweating had stopped. After sitting on the runway for 30 minutes the flight attendant announced that we were waiting for “something” (her word, not mine) and that the captain would come on when they knew more. In another ten minutes or so the captain announced that there were thunder and lightening storms moving into the Philadelphia area. We were also very close to not having enough fuel on board for the required amount in a storm AND we had a minor mechanical issue. He promised to get back with us in five minutes when he knew more. Five minutes later he announced that our mechanical issue had something to do with the wind sheer detection device. Often times this is a piece of equipment that one can fly without, however, flying into a thunderstorm is not one of those times. We then taxied back to the gate to deboard, so that mechanical could fix the problem.

By the time we reentered the terminal, IN IAD, we had been on the plane nearly two hours. The initial announcement suggested that it would take roughly 20 minutes for the problem to be fixed. At 7 pm the gate agents announced that the flight had been pushed back another 30 minutes. Mom and were starving, so we decided to go to Five Guys, a burger place right next to our gate. My cousin Ben has always maintained they have awesome burgers, so I was actually kind of excited to try them. The burger and fries were in fact very, very good. I’m not sure if this was a result of my being really hungry or that it was legitimately good. I imagine it was a combination of the two.

At 7:15 pm my phone and it was United calling to tell me the flight had been pushed back to 7:55 pm. We thus leisurely finished our food and then made our way back to the gate. For the next hour and thirty minutes they continued to push our flight back in 20 minute increments. Evidently the thunderstorm had finally arrived in Philly and now it was playing a roll in our flight (not) leaving as well. At 9:48 pm, five hours after starting this adventure in IAD, our flight was canceled.

I rushed over to the customer service line because I wanted to see if by chance there was anyway to catch a flight tonight. If not, I wanted to know how I would be compensated for my inconvenience. I was the third or so person in line. By the time I made it to the front of the line United had already called to tell me that I had been rebooked on flight tomorrow night at 9 pm. As established before mom and I weren’t thrilled with that plan since it would cost us one of our only three days with the family. We decided since DC is only 140 miles from Granny’s house that we should just drive. At the customer service counter I told the guy that’s what we were going to do. I was able to talk my way into $650 in travel credits and $30 in meal vouchers for my inconvenience. Finally, I needed him to pull our checked bags so that we could have them to take with us in the car. He said that would be no problem but it would likely take 45 minutes to an hour.

With that time I quickly shopped for the best rental car deal and went with mom to the only open food place to spend our $30. We got a few beverages, cereal, some yogurt and a rice crispy treat. Armed with our snacks we were off to the baggage claim.

There were a lot of bags sitting around the baggage carousel. Within a fairly short amount of time I located my bag. I was using a red roller duffel on this trip, so it was pretty easy to spot. Mom’s bag on the other hand could not be found. I went inside the United baggage office to speak with an agent. He looked at the tags and found her bag was in fact in DC it was just outside on the ramp. Unfortunately because of the lightening storm currently overhead, no bags were being moved on the ramp. The baggage delay was estimated to last 5 hours because it was a “slow moving storm”. This meant that mom’s bag was not going to be retrieved any time soon. I hadn’t been outside since deboarding our flight four hours ago, so I wanted to see if they were making it up. I took some solace in the fact that it was one heck of storm. It was pouring rain and the lightening bolts were pretty intense. That being said, I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of driving unfamiliar roads in this downpour. Mom and I decided it would be best to spend the night in DC, pick up the bag in the morning, and then make our way to Granny’s.

In light of that decision I went back in the baggage office and asked them for a hotel voucher. This took forever (another 20 minutes or so) because of some glitch in the system. Eventually I received my voucher and we were finally on our way to the Hertz bus. The bus came as soon as we stepped outside. He took us straight to my name in lights and within 10 minutes we were off to the hotel. Too bad we were in DC and it was already past midnight!

United put us up in an incredibly nice hotel. It was called the Landsdown Resort and can be seen here. One perk to having a screwed up day was that I actually got to spend the night in a very comfortable bed. I love going to Granny’s but the bed in my room there is more like a hammock. I’m pretty sure it is still the original from 1960. Speaking of beds... I’m beat and I’m calling it a night.

Katy