Summertime, and the livin' ain't easy - Jerry Chandler lets fly
I had it coming. I should have known. I am, yet again, chastened. Among Cheapflights' top tips for summertime is to avoid, whenever possible, flying in the afternoon. That's when thunderstorms blossom, wreaking havoc with air traffic controls and airline schedules.
And do it is that I booked a late afternoon flight from Boston (BOS) to Birmingham (BHM), via Atlanta (ATL). Brain fade, and I paid for it.
After rushing out in the middle of a meeting to catch the train to Boston Logan, I got to the automated Delta Air Lines kiosk, swiped my card and watched the words "Irregular Operation" pop up.
Oops.
My 5pm flight was cancelled - apparently one of some 200 flights Delta axed Wednesday (June 28) because of the weather. No problem. The carrier automatically re-booked me on a 6:15pm departure. Got to the gate and 6:15 became 7:15, which morphed into 8:15, which nudged nine o'clock. We got off the ground, detouring over Cleveland to beat the East Coast mess. The crew was professional, polite, even empathetic. Free movies and all the bottled water we could quaff. The passengers even laughed at the first of what turned out to be a double-header film festival aloft as our 757 flew west, and then banked south.
Ah, Atlanta bound. Then we began circling somewhere over Tennessee. Atlanta was lit up like a Christmas tree in perhaps the biggest lightning display of this drought-plagued season down south. Estimated time of arrival: 11:15. Actual time: after midnight.
As I landed, my flight for Birmingham had just boarded.
Okay, time to re-book. The Delta flight attendant on-board said a “uniformed gate agent” would meet us planeside and “be happy” to re-book us. I alighted from the aircraft with 200 of my - by then - closest friends to find no one. Okay, on to the lobby. Surely there would be people scurrying about all over waiting to help. ATL is, after all, Delta's main hub, indeed the single largest airline hub on the planet. In the wee hours of Friday (June 28), however, that lobby was staffed with but a half-dozen harried agents.
What's fascinating about all of this is the response of the passengers. They assumed the standing-up-fetal position - no yelling, no imprecations, no promises “never again to fly Delta”. They just waited.
I grabbed a cab to downtown Atlanta and found a hotel room. After a 35-minute wait on the phone, someone half a world away answered my call politely and re-booked me for an early Friday morning departure.
I'm at the airport right now, waiting to board. My flight is scheduled to leave in 37 minutes. I've got to get to the gate. The sky is streaked with blue outside, the deluge of the evening before mere puddles on the tarmac.
Next time, I'll avoid afternoon summertime flying. I promise.
© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Cheap Flight News