Up, Up and Go Away
By ANN HOOD
NYT
Providence, R.I.
WHEN I stepped off the plane from Miami into the Charlotte, N.C., airport for a connecting flight home, I immediately knew something was wrong. Hordes of desperate people crowded the terminal. I quickly learned that flights headed to the Northeast were canceled because of a storm. The earliest they could get us out of Charlotte was Tuesday. It was Friday. A gate agent stood on the counter and shouted: “Don’t ask us for help! We cannot help you!”
I joined a mob that ran from terminal to terminal in search of a flight out. Eventually, I found six strangers willing to rent a van with me. We drove through the night to Washington, where I took a train the rest of the way to Providence.
The real problem, of course, is that incidents like this happen every day, to everyone who flies, more and more often. It really gets to me, though, because for eight years I was on the other side as a flight attendant for T.W.A.
I know the days are gone when attendants could be written up if we did not put the linen napkins with the T.W.A. logo embossed on them in the lower righthand corner of the first-class diners’ trays. As are the days when there were three dinner options on flights from Boston to Los Angeles — in coach. When, once, stuck on a tarmac in Newark for four hours, a planeload of passengers got McDonald’s hamburgers and fries courtesy of the airline.
(More here.)
NYT
Providence, R.I.
WHEN I stepped off the plane from Miami into the Charlotte, N.C., airport for a connecting flight home, I immediately knew something was wrong. Hordes of desperate people crowded the terminal. I quickly learned that flights headed to the Northeast were canceled because of a storm. The earliest they could get us out of Charlotte was Tuesday. It was Friday. A gate agent stood on the counter and shouted: “Don’t ask us for help! We cannot help you!”
I joined a mob that ran from terminal to terminal in search of a flight out. Eventually, I found six strangers willing to rent a van with me. We drove through the night to Washington, where I took a train the rest of the way to Providence.
The real problem, of course, is that incidents like this happen every day, to everyone who flies, more and more often. It really gets to me, though, because for eight years I was on the other side as a flight attendant for T.W.A.
I know the days are gone when attendants could be written up if we did not put the linen napkins with the T.W.A. logo embossed on them in the lower righthand corner of the first-class diners’ trays. As are the days when there were three dinner options on flights from Boston to Los Angeles — in coach. When, once, stuck on a tarmac in Newark for four hours, a planeload of passengers got McDonald’s hamburgers and fries courtesy of the airline.
(More here.)
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