Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Travel Tips

Rule #1: Don’t travel with me.

That’s basically it. Trouble follows me! I made it to training all in one piece, but this is what happened:
I got to Atlanta, and my flights were so close together that I had to run to my next gate. I got to see my friend, Nathan, because our gates were right next to each other. While chatting with him, my flight was delayed. About 20 minutes later, it was delayed again. About 10 minutes after that, it was delayed again. That should have been a tip-off.

When we finally boarded, the pilot greets us and just casually mentions that the reason for the delays was a mechanical malfunction (something about a circuit board?). Not to worry- the problem has been fixed. I get comfortable- I had two seats to myself- and start dozing a little.
About 45 minutes into the flight, the captain comes over the intercom again and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, the problem that we thought was fixed in Atlanta is, in fact, not fixed, and I have been advised by the control tower to return to Atlanta.”

I would like to point out that we were halfway to our destination. Ugh… We made it back to Atlanta and were told that we would all deplane, trot down to a different gate, and then board another plane.

I had met another girl on the plane who was also headed to training. We compared notes, and I called the lady in charge of all of us traveling and filled her in on our situation. She asks us to check and see if there was any way to be rerouted to another airport, because the shuttle that we were supposed to take from the airport had already left.

We checked. No dice.

We reboarded and were good to go… then we had to wait in line behind about 17 other planes, waiting to take off. That took about an extra hour. After an eternity, we finally made it to Virginia. Then, we had to make many calls to find out what to do about transportation to our final destination. We found out that the drive was about 2 hours!

To wrap up: we found our ride, rode for two hours, and FINALLY made it! And, our driver was even kind enough to stop and get us dinner!

3 comments:

Jamie said...

Whew! I think I am all caught up now. :)

Sorry about the travel whoas. Glad to hear that you made it safely and go some dinner.

Unknown said...

Wow, that's horrible, Erin! Oh well, at least you finally did make it. I don't mind flying, but dealing with stuff like this is a royal pain. I've run into my share of troubles in traveling for work. Direct flights are great things, though I guess you could still have problems with that.

Unknown said...

whew! quite a journey!

are you sure the mechanical problem wasn't with the felangy?