This story is dedicated to my wife who puts up with…well a lot as it relates to me. I often think I should have chosen a career as an arctic explorer. Because I’m often told that I’m skating on thin ice. But to be fair, this was not an arranged marriage. To paraphrase Dathan from the movie, The Ten Commandments: She made this choice of her own free will.
So I meet an old friend to fly fish once a year. He’s on the west coast and I’m on the east coast. The last three years we’ve gone to the Green River in the northeast corner of Utah. This means flying into Salt Lake City (SLC) and then driving another three and a half hours to get to the destination. My poison of choice is United Airlines. Unfortunately two years ago United stopped offering direct flights between Newark and Salt Lake City. Last year they put me on a connecting flight through Chicago with a 40 minute layover. I couldn’t sleep for a month as I was constantly thinking about how I was going to be running down the gangway and banging on the door to the plane demanding, and then pleading that they open the door and let me on.
This year six months in advance I decided to abandon United and booked a flight on Airline “X”. Salt Lake City is one of their major hubs and they had an abundance of direct flights. I’m all set now, until... I had a 6:40PM flight out of Newark, their last flight of the day to SLC. I got up that morning at a leisurely pace thinking to myself boy it rained pretty good last night, I’m glad I don’t have a morning flight. I picked up my iPhone and there was one new message, it’s from airline “X”. It read and I’m paraphrasing, “You seemed to be getting way too comfortable, one might say even cocky, so we decided to cancel your flight. We took the liberty of rebooking you on another flight. It’s a connector through Detroit that will get you to your final destination by Christmas. And to put a cherry on top, we’ve made it virtually impossible to get your money back. We will only offer an e-credit so we can do this to you again on your next flight with us. Thanks for choosing “X.”
Enter the Mrs. She jumps on her iPhone and with lightning speed assesses the situation and finds a flight on Jet Blue that leaves out of JFK Airport in about two and half hours. It’s raining again and I can’t see getting my sorry act together and then making the trip down Rt.78, onto the Turnpike, over the Goethals & Verrazano Bridges, onto the 15 mile stretch of the heinous Belt Parkway which floods consistently on sunny days. Nope, I’m just going to sit on the floor and cry. She’ll hear none of it. I’m leaving whether I like it or not! My wife grabs me by the ear, picks me up off the carpet (next to no exaggeration here. It was like when someone gets some horrific news and suddenly adrenaline kicks in and they have super strength - go figure.) and throws me and my gear into the car and we take off.
Turns out Waze wanted to take us thru the Holland Tunnel to get to JFK. I cringe thinking, “Really, the Holland Tunnel, why don’t we just go through Pluto, wouldn’t that be faster? Then we saw signs saying that the Holland Tunnel was closed until further notice. Turned off Waze and brought up Google Maps. In the pouring rain we muscle out way over multiple bridges and onto the dreaded Belt Parkway where we dodge small lakes on our final leg of the adventure to JFK.
I get to Terminal 5 and approach the Jet Blue area. (I haven’t been to JFK or flown Jet Blue in over 15 years…this will be fun) There is an alarmingly large sea of people and they all look like they’re late for their flights. Oddly though, there are no customer service agents helping folks with the automated check-in system. I fail a number of times trying to get the scanner to recognize the e-ticket barcode on my iPhone. (So much for problem free AI. Hopefully the scanners connected to our ballistic missiles are from a different manufacturer.) I walk away before turning into the Incredible Hulk and throwing the kiosk through a wall. I collect myself, walk back to the kiosk, decide to insert my credit card and voila, I’m in.
As I approach my gate, I look out the large windows and see a number of Jet Blue planes. They all look gleamingly new. The main bodies and wings are an off white color and the tail of the planes have a nice soft blue and green plaid design on them. I get to my gate and look out the window at my plane. It’s a solid green. It could have been in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It was Green all over, except for where the numerous scratch marks were. This plane looked like it was in a catfight with about twenty tigers and lost bad. It was as if they went to a garage sale, saw the plane and said, “This is a bargain we can’t pass up.”
Inside, the plane was fine and the attendants were very nice. We’re all seated and ready for take off, literally 20 minutes ahead of schedule. I’m thinking, finally a break. Then I looked up and noticed one of the mechanics in a bright orange vest is standing in the doorway of the cockpit. He’s speaking with the pilot. They’re not smiling. I quickly put two and two together and surmised this is not good. As a matter of fact, the only thing that could be worse is if they got on the PA system and told us we had a mechanical issue and we’re not taking off…which is what happened next. The captain steps outside the cockpit and picks up the microphone. He let us know that we did have a minor technical issue, but it’s been addressed. He continues, unfortunately now we just need to complete some paperwork that will take 15 minutes, then we’ll be on our way. Then the lead flight attendant jumps in and tells us that the PA system needs to be rebooted before take off and that will take 20 minutes to complete. Then the captain gets back on the airwaves and says, “Oh, and because of the heavy rain, we’ll be taxiing on the runway for about an hour before take off. Disappointing as all of that was, I still have to give the captain and JetBlue a lot of credit. They came out promptly, explained the situation and kept us all from melting down in our seats. My airline of choice would never do that. Instead, they would take the Marie Antoinette approach: “Oh are they upset? Let them eat cake.” Only there’s never any cake.
