Sunday, November 1, 2009

For you Procrastinators...

There's something to be said for just barely making your plane sometimes. Running like you're training for the Senior Olympics. Running like OJ's late for his plane and he's behind you waving a knife. I, on the other hand, got to the Trudeau Airport in Montreal with three hours to spare, since I've previously dealt with Canadian Customs (our motto: "If we can't make your day worse, then we're just not doing our job").

Today though, I breezed through Customs and Security behind maybe two other people and had time to have lunch and a leisurely walk to my gate, where.............Nothing happened! No announcement when the departure time of 4:10 arrived and departed. I looked outside; no plane. No problem. I've got a two and a half hour layover in New York on my way to Burlington, Vermont.

At 4:40 the gate display read 4:45. Still no announcement. Still no plane. At 4:50 a plane rolled in. I moved out of the way to avoid the crush of de-planing passengers. For about 10 minutes, when I realized there were no passengers on the plane. Or pilot. Or crew. Then we get an announcement: "There will be a short delay while a mechanic checks out a tire that has too much air in it." Ok, when was the last time you had to remove air from a tire on your car that you just backed out of the garage? And why didn't they know this when they were still in the hanger or wherever this bird came from?

So now it's 5:50 and the reader board says we will be boarding at 5:35. Evidently the airport clock has been broken by the excess air in the starboard tire of our aircraft. It also seems to have taken out the paging system. Still no announcement. 6:00 - "We'll be boarding the airplane in 5 minutes". Oh yay!

So I'm off on another "Adventure"...

Smee