United We Fail

Here's how the last four cross-Appalachian trips have gone for your favorite blogger.

• May 4th, Columbus: The plane backs away from the terminal four inches and stops. The captain tells us that indications in the cockpit show that someone on the ground crew had disconnected a power cable too early, so they would need to Ctrl-Alt-Del, power down the entire aircraft and start from scratch. Meanwhile, we had missed our scheduled ... okay, I'm a space guy, I call it a launch window...whatever pilots call the time they can take off from the runway. 40 minute delay. Curiously, we land on time at Dulles.
• May 7th, Dulles: At this airport, passengers have no jetway to get to the little 50-pax express jets, and have to walk for a stretch outside. Which is normally not a big deal, except on this date, when there was torrential thunderstorm directly overhead. Plus, even though we could see them running around all over the place, we were delayed fifty minutes waiting for members of the ground crew to get around to stowing our checked carry-on luggage, which had been sitting out in the rain for twenty minutes until the captain himself had gone out and dragged them underneath the wing.
• May 26th, Dayton: Taxiing to take off, the captain tells us that we have to sit for thirty minutes due to "pop-up" t-storms in the DC area. Perfectly understandable. But once we land, we are told that an aircraft is at our gate, and it's taking on fuel. Thirty minutes later we move to another spot to get out of the way. Fifteen minutes after that, we are told the aircraft at our gate is having issues, and they are trying to find another gate for us. After a full hour on the tarmac, we wind our way to a gate that was empty when we first drove by it when we landed.
• May 29th, Dulles: I had e-checked-in the night prior to my flight, but for a lark before passing through security, I checked the board to see which gate I was headed for, even though I had done this a half-dozen times this year and knew the route by heart. Strange. Don't remember "Canceled" as being any gate I'd used before. A bevested ferrier of disgruntled put me into a long line to talk to a ticket agent, who told me he could get me to Cincinnati, "How would that work for you?" "It wouldn't." "We have a flight in the morning at 10:30 that will arrive at 12:15." Doesn't help with my 8 o'clock class, my homework assignment due for said class, or figuring out how to extend my leave and not be AWOL. "Is there NO other airline flying to Dayton this evening?" He checked, and found a US Airways flight leaving in three hours. Only it was leaving from National Airport. He gave me a voucher for the $55 cab ride across town, and I eventually got on board a flight that knows how to take care of people. I got two bags of pretzels. Two!

I am almost looking forward to flying to Russia, just for a change of paceski.