E-rock Posted January 30, 2007 Posted January 30, 2007 This is how I entertain myself during delays: I’m sitting in Washington Dulles Airport in terminal G, perhaps the most miserable terminal in all of North America. And only one airline operates out of this terminal, United. I woke up at 6:30 am after waking up at 12:00 am to answer an automated phone call from united informing me that my connecting flight here in IAD was changed due to a delay of my first leg from Columbia to IAD. My flight from Columbia, originally scheduled to depart at 6 am did not leave until 10:30 because an aircraft was not available (how the FuCk does THIS happen?). The door is so open and drafty that I’m now watching a bird pick crumbs off the filthy carpeting. The bird just flew back up to its perch on the cornice above gates G22-G26 (which is a misnomer anyway because the “gates” lead to the same cattle coral as all the other “gates” in the terminal) where white smears of bird shit are visibly dripping down the sides of the cornice onto the heads of unsuspecting passengers attempting to board their late-to-depart flights. At the same time as all of this a rather LOUD woman is shouting down over all of our heads (not only those who are flying to Atlanta, but ALL of us, because that’s the way G terminal is designed. We must endure an endless litany of shouting on the PA system for every flight that boards, for every mispronounced name of missing-in-action passengers, and for every standby passenger who happens to get lucky. And if that were not enough to split your throbbing skull, we also get up-to-the-minute announcements of where on God’s green Earth our First Officer at this very moment might be because we all might POSSIBLY (or then again, possibly NOT) give a great deal of SHIT where he is except on the airplane he’s supposed to be flying. Similarly, last weekend I flew to Columbia from ROC through IAD, with an equally unpleasant stop in the G terminal. My flight from IAD was supposed to arrive in CAE at just after 11 pm, but departure from IAD was delayed until midnight because, you guessed it, our First Officer was missing. Apparently, as we were informed in endless, headache-inducing, amplified updates, he was somewhere in the airport, but United wasn’t able to actually locate the whereabouts of their employee beyond a 2 mile radius. Quote
rbw1966 Posted January 30, 2007 Posted January 30, 2007 I've never had a united flight that was not delayed. Quote
archenemy Posted January 30, 2007 Posted January 30, 2007 Was the first officer with the "unavailable" plane? Quote
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