i hate air travel!!! and here’s why.

so yesterday, on our way back from portland, where we’d been vacationing (and me at a creativity conference) for five days, our flight time was delayed by 30 minutes. which was fine… no big deal, i thought; we’d just get into dallas at 8:30 p.m. instead of 8.

we loaded onto the plane 30 minutes late, taxied out to the runway and stopped. the pilot came on the intercom and told us that we would be delayed an hour because of severe thunderstorms in dallas, but that we had to stay where we are, on the plane — with nothing to drink and mimimal air conditioning, of course. if we’d left 5 minutes earlier we could have taken offm, but air traffic control had declared a ground stop and air stop into dallas. so at this point i was thinking, argh, a four hour flight is long enough as it is without another hour stuck in these cramped seats. but… i’ll deal. at least i had a good book with me.

at the end of our hour delay, the pilot told us that there would be ANOTHER hour and 15 minutes delay. amazingly, no passengers got visibly upset, other than mild expressions of irritation at the situation. i was annoyed, of course, but glad that the mood on the plane seemed to be “this sucks, but we’re all in it together and there’s nothing we can do.” and i guess the alternative would be us having to land at some other airport in a different city and wait out the storm there.

at the end of this 3rd delay, we had used up so much gas just sitting there that we had to wheel on back to the gate to refuel. 30 minutes later, at about 5:30 p.m. (three and a quarter hours late) we took off. the flight itself was relatively uneventful, with minimal turbulence, two rounds of the drink cart, and one so-so “Bistro Bag” meal containing a turkey sandwich on a white roll, potato chips, carrots, and an overly-dry dessert bar. i got through most of my book. doc read a lot of magazines and tried (and succeeded) to remain calm despite the cramped and claustrophobic situation. the pilot came on the intercom about five times to tell us our route was changing because of the weather, the upshot being that we’d be 20 minutes longer in the air (as he said, “thank god we went back for more gas because if we didn’t we’d be landing somewhere inbetween to fill up.”)

when we finally landed in dallas, it was in the middle of a massive rainstorm and it was after 11:30 p.m. doc and i were disappointed that we did not see any of the promised static lightning off the wings of the plane on descent, due to the supercharged atmosphere. it took us probably 15 minutes to taxi over to the gates; i guess they had us land on some runway in BFE. when we got to the terminal, all the gates were full due to the massive delays and rescheduling, so we waited ANOTHER 20 minutes for a plane to leave so we could unload.

by this time we’d been sitting in the same tiny seats with the same cranky people and the same seat-back-kicking jesus-song-singing hick children for more than SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT!!

the plane was supposed to get in shortly before 8 p.m., but it was after midnight by the time we got off the damn thing. and since we had to get our bags from baggage claim, apparently along with every single other person in the airport, we did not get home until after 1 a.m.