I went to DC for work on Wednesday - then due to some inane rules from my government employer worried about how tax funded employee stays beyond the end of an official meeting may look to the voting public I was required to return to Seattle last night. The meeting ended at 4pm, my flight was at 6:30pm, with an expected arrival in Seattle at 11pm.
I had 4 flights in that time - first went to Denver then DC, yesterday to Chicago then Seattle. Every single one of them had some major issue and delay. Let me detail them for you.
- Seattle to Denver: plane arrived an hour late due to "weather in San Francisco" - which given my connecting flight was 45 min after landing, this made me bite my nails. But not too much.
- Denver to DC: I made it to the next plane with little time to spare. It was on time and I was feeling oh so hopeful. We then taxi'ed out, sat on the tarmac for an hour, then taxi'ed back to the gate. There was some kind of mechanical issue with the plane. Slow as molasses the news trickled out that we needed to wait an hour to see if they could find the part... then after that we learned we needed to wait another hour to see if the part would fix it. Given the flight was full of folks who had been rebooked to this flight after their earlier flight was cancelled - this news didn't go over well. Luckily it did eventually get fixed and we left. I got to my hotel at midnight and had to get up at 5 for the meeting. Between that and the fact that I sleep like crap the first night at a hotel, I wasn't real coherent at the actual meeting.
- DC to Chicago: After getting through the rather sad, delapidated Dulles airport, their kind of tiny, hot and overwhelmed security checkpoint, and riding the sort of freaky people mover transport bus/tank thing, I got to my plane. Which was on time. A big plane, lots of empty seats, with the little tv screens on the back of each seat. I Love those. I was thinking, this was going to be different - a nice ride - and it was, except for the hour wait on the flight path (along with all other planes leaving Dulles) due to concerning weather. Again, not a big issue except for the fact that I only had a 45 min layover in Chicago.
- Chicago to Seattle: So they made up a little time in the air and we got to Chicago with 15 min to go - so I b-lined it to the departure screens and there was a "delayed" by my next flight to Seattle. That doesn't bode well. Not even an estimated time of departure. So I wandered over to the gate to find a lot of people looking surly. The plane was having mechanical issues and they were not sure it'd leave. Eventually we were told that we'd know by 10pm if the part would fix it. The flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30pm. Around 9:30 they told us they found a different plane for us - so we needed to go to a different concourse and gate. So, we all went over there, got on the plane, it taxied out, then sat on the tarmac for 1.5 hours while they tried to figure out some discrpancy in their fuel readings. Then, because we sat there for so long the weather in Seattle deteriorated so they needed to return to the gate to add more fuel in the event they couldn't land in Seattle and needed to be diverted to Portland. So we returned to the gate for 45 minutes while they added more fuel. Then we taxi'ed out again, waited 30 minutes on the flight path for some other issue, and finally left DC at 11:30pm. I got into Seattle at 1:45am, home at 2:30, and was asleep by 3. The whole thing ended up being an 11 hour process.
Well, I guess I should be grateful I 1) got to the meeting and 2) got back home. I could've been stuck in Denver or Chicago or Portland overnight, but wasn't. So, now I just have to readjust this sleep-disordered body to regular life. Until we have to do all of this again when I go back to DC for a longer meeting in August. But that will be on Alaska. Direct. In theory.
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