(Ella) We are on a one day delay. Our flight out of ABQ was cancelled after a two hour delay while a mechanic tried to fix the hydraulics. Couldn’t be done. By then, we were toast for getting out of Albuquerque and getting somewhere that would lead us to Lisbon. We spent the next 4 hours getting re-booked, re-documented, re-checked-in for tomorrow. So, great test run today.
(Grubb) I knew it was a bad omen when I wasn’t allowed to invoke my TSA Pre number and had to join the larger line snaking through the barriers. Not used to taking off my shoes; seemed so retro! At the gate, I watched Ella board the plane and then heard the announcement that boarding was being suspended while mechanics checked out the plane. Thirty minutes later she emerged and joined the rest of us anxiously peering at our cell phones.
(Grubb) I was reminded of a flight we were to take to Athens over Christmas in 2017. We waited while the mechanics did their dance, then an hour later the entire crew of KLM lined up in front of us looking somewhat shamefaced as the pilot woefully announced that the flight was cancelled. Today was United Airlines and none of the staff wanted to confirm or deny. Suffice it to say that if the ground crew tell you that your flight is delayed and you see baggage rolling down the ramp away from the plane rather than towards it, well, you’ll feel the sinking sensation that I felt knowing that I didn’t need a weather man, much less a flight attendant, to tell me which way the wind was blowing.
Wishing you luck getting off the ground today!
Thanks Chinle! We are in Newark right now waiting for our flight to Lisbon. So we just might make it!
Garden State this ain’t!
Delayed and canceled flights are one of the biggest worries of modern travel. A cancellation sometimes results in a several day delay, because the next day flights are too full to accommodate all the passengers needing rebooking.
If it was the Newark-Lisbon leg that had gotten canceled, would they have been able to accommodate all those passengers on the next day? If x+y > 1, where x is today’s percentage full and y is tomorrow’s percentage full, then some people are really screwed, or, at best, have an awkward new routing.
When weather clobbers a major hub, or, worse, an entire region, in can take up to a week to unscramble. There needs to be more slack in the system. Is anybody listening….?
Shoestring operations seems to be the name of the game. Not much buffer for overcoming disruptions. The pandemic and ripple effects and all that.
We re-adjusted our attitude by feeling awfully lucky that for us, it was only a one day delay to the start of a vacation. We weren’t in a war-torn country fleeing for our lives.
Still, it was all rather frustrating to get everything sorted out.