On my way back from the Boarding Area Conference (BACon) at Colorado Springs which ended today, I was booked on a very simple route to get to New York via Dallas/Fort Worth in the afternoon. If all would have been well, I’d have been on the East Coast by now, sleeping in a hotel room in Manhattan. However, it was not to be.
Once we were seated on our slightly delayed flight, the captain informed us we had a flat tire on the plane, which could happen on landing at high altitude airports such as COS, and as such, they won’t be able to move before the tire was changed. The good news, he said was, they had a tire and a jack at the airport, so all they had to do was fix this thing and it would be 30 minutes to 45 before we’d be on our way, considering paperwork needed to be done. I thought, even a plain and simple car tire takes a while to fix, so this plane isn’t going anywhere soon! This is how it looks when there are people trying to replace a plane tire.
We were advised to deplane and wait inside the terminal and things were not looking good now. I was booked on the second-last flight to NYC that evening from DFW, and I called to protect on the last flight out, however I was informed the flight was sold out and I could not go anywhere till the morning. I would be on my way on the first flight out in the morning however.
A short while later, we heard that the brakes had also come off while fixing the tire, so there was no way this plane was going to be fixed anytime soon since they’d need stuff which was only going to be available in Denver. So, the flight take off time, scheduled for 1:35 PM was now looking at 7:15 PM or so. The agent was honest and asked to call AA Reservations to rebook on the 4:55 PM flight, since they were not going to be able to handle all the load themselves.
I managed to get across to the Executive Platinum line, and they rebooked me onto the 4:55 PM flight, that too getting me in First again. However, I was now supposed to be sleeping at DFW and going to New York next morning.
I decided that sleeping was going to be a waste of time so I’d rather keep moving. Hence, once in Dallas, I called again, and tried to get on a more sane routing, which meant flying on the next plane from Dallas to Los Angeles, and then going on the red eye from LAX to New York JFK. That means, a simple thing like going to New York now looks like this routing.
So, I just got off coach in DFW-LAX, where they were asking for volunteers for a bump and offering $500 to stay over the night, and off I go on the 3-class LAX-JFK redeye where business class upgrade has been confirmed. However, I’m right now in the LAX Admirals club, and this beast is teasing me to go to Australia. I think I’ll just head out to board for JFK instead.
Laters!!
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Hey AJ, I’m a regular visitor of your awesome, do keep up the great work. Now, did you say you heard a quantas boarding call from LAX to NYC. Whoa…. An Australian airline flying domestic in the US. Tell us more ?
You didn’t take the bump??
Also, I’m not sure many folks would consider COS-LAX-JFK a “more sane” routing. 😉
@Seth, I’d have raised my hand for the bump but at that point of time I just wanted to keep moving. Plus, I’m going to get some sort of comp for getting me over to NYC 10 hours later than plan anyways 😉
As for the sane routing part, we are all peas of the same pod, right? 😉
Had tires blow out acccastionally. Much rsther fixed prior to rolling.