I typing this on an airplane on my way home to Los Angeles, marveling
over where my travels have taken me within the last week:
More
than 8000 miles on three airlines (Northwest, American, Frontier), six
different airports (Los Angeles 4x, Chicago Midway 2x, Las Vegas
McCarren, Denver 2x, Chicago OHare, and Detroit 2x), and a total of
eight separate planes (On Friday, I identified each animal emblazoned
on the tails of my four Frontier flights; I've since forgotten their
cute names, but the animals were a wolf, a rabbit, an elk, and a
moose). Needless to say, I'm a little travel weary.
My job as
an automotive journalist and blogger has provided many opportunities to
travel; auto shows, vehicle product reveals, and educational
conferences take me away from home about once a month. This week, I had
two short trips bookended around Mother's Day: The first was the
"Marketing 2 Women" conference in Chicago, and the second was an
overnighter to Detroit to co-star in a short Prestone video in which I
offer female friendly advice to help moms get their cars and families ready for summer road trips.
While the opportunities are exciting enough on their own, Monday's flight brought a whole new adventure to traveling.
It
started off like any ordinary day: Left my house at 6:15 am and pulled
into the long-term parking lot for Los Angeles International Airport at
7 for an 8:30 flight to Detroit. Ordinarily, this is plenty of time,
but on this day, the shuttle was running late, pushing my arrival to
the ticket counter within the 50-minute check-in window. Rather than
risk complications at the security checkpoint, I opted to check my
overnight case; I don't usually check my bag, but the flight was very
full, I was running late, and I didn't want to deal with the hassle of
trying to stow it in the (likely to be stuffed) overhead bins.
At
the gate, I discovered the flight was overbooked, and briefly
considered giving up my seat. The prospect of a free ticket was
tempting, but I needed to meet with the Prestone crew, and decided it
would be a bad idea to make new colleagues wait for me. It wasn't long before I began to regret this decision.
About
10 to 15 minutes after takeoff, passengers heard a loud bang from
outside the plane; we seemed to be flying without much turbulence, so I
assumed that maybe a bird had hit the wing, and didn't give it much
more thought... Until the pilot and the flight crew paraded down the
aisle and started looking out the windows at the starboard-side wing.
They conferred in the aisle, then calmly returned to their appointed
stations. Nothing too dramatic.
Moments later, the pilot made an announcement: turns out we lost a
2x3-foot panel off the wing, one of four that covered an assortment of
hydraulic lines operating the wing flaps. (Uhm, a piece of our plane
fell off! A BIG piece!) The pilot assured us everything would be fine,
but indicated he would need to have it checked; to do that, we would be
making an emergency landing in Las Vegas. As part of required protocol,
they cleared the airspace around the airport for our landing; upon our
touchdown we were escorted up the runway by emergency crews, and were
towed up to the terminal by 9:30. That was a little dramatic.
This
is where the excitement ends, and the aggravation sets in. More than
200 passengers disembarked the plane into the gate area, where we were
told they were rebooking us. A Northwest agent gave us $10 amenity
coupons to buy a snack, and told us not to go too far away while they
attempted to make new arrangements for the displaced travelers.
Smart
passengers had immediately begun making calls from the plane, and some
of them were actually able to get placed onto a flight that was
scheduled to leave from a nearby gate, just a few minutes after our
arrival. However, after waiting nearly three hours to find out my own
status, I was told by the gate attendant that there weren't any more
Northwest flights leaving for Detroit. I asked if they could find
something that would allow a connection through another airport. Then I
asked if they could find me a ticket with another carrier. All their
answers indicated that I could either stay the night and take another
flight the next day, or cancel my trip and go back home to Los Angeles.
Now my aggravation was turning to angry frustration.
I
attempted to cool my ire and pass the time by tweeting
(twitter.com/hondagrrl) periodic updates to my twitter page, and typing
text messages to my momfriends at home. It was the next best
alternative to the mental movie playing in my head that starred me
going postal at the airport.
It would have been useless for me
to get to Detroit AFTER the video shoot, so I considered heading home.
Then I discovered that, even though my own body did not get on the next
Detroit-bound flight, my overnight bag DID. I figured since my bag was
gonna make it there, I would try another tactic, and asked my
colleagues at Prestone for a little help. Sativa Ross and her crew hit
the phones with Northwest ticketing to try to find an alternate flight.
This was complicated by the fact that Northwest's booking system didn't
know our flight had been redirected, and kept trying to convert my
ticket to something else out of my previous airport. Apparently there
were many empty seats on flights departing from Los Angeles -- I
discovered this after running to try to catch a flight at another gate,
only to discover it was a flight leaving a gate from LAX.
Just
when I was thinking that my only option was going to be a red-eye
Northwest flight leaving McCarran at 10:30 and arriving in Detroit at
5:30 am, Sativa's team found an American Airlines flight leaving Los
Vegas at 3:30. With a very short stopover in Chicago, I would be in
Detroit soon after Midnight.
Conveniently, the ticket counter for this flight was right next to the
gate where stranded passengers were still trying to make new
arrangements. Fortunately, the attendant there said she could offer six
additional seats to displaced travelers. Ironically, none of the
Northwest agents seemed aware of this option available just feet away
from where they were standing.
American
ticketed me, and 15 hours after leaving my home, I arrived in Detroit.
A courteous J&B driver met me at the curb, took me to the Northwest
terminal to collect my waiting bag, and finally, deposited me around 1
am the comfy Holiday Inn Express in Bloomfield Hills.
Good
things did happen as a result of this adventure: I made a new
friendship with Marilyn, the woman seated next to me on the original
plane out of Los Angeles. And the "Get Road Ready" video shoot went great! Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/user/GetRoadReady
By Brandy Schaffels
AskPatty.com Editor and exhausted traveler