While you're here, be sure to check out the rest of my blog.
We've been sitting on the tarmac for over 45 minutes waiting to take off. They're having some maintanence issues with the plane. The poor guy next to me already missed one connection today after sittting on the runway in West Palm for 3 hours. It looks like he's all set to miss his next connection flying into Denver.
I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like this kind of stuff is becoming more common. Does anyone else agree or know of any data on airline delays? I am much more prone to fly direct whenever possible than before.
The pilot just announced we have to return to the gate to power the plane completely down in order to reboot their systems. I wonder what happens if they need to reboot while we're in the air.
Hopefully this will fix everything and we'll be underway soon. The remarkable thing is how polite and accepting all the passengers have been.
Update: Real-time blogging from the tarmac continued throughout the afternoon and into the night. Read all of these posts here.
To answer the questions of one of the commenters, I wrote these posts using my Treo and am flying (or at least trying to) on United Airlines.
I am trying to get out to Kansas City to spend Easter with my 91-year-old Aunt Ruth. She's my grandfather's sister and the last of her generation in my family. She and I traveled to Alaska together last summer (when she was 90). I just uploaded some pictures from our journey and recommend reading the life lessons I learned from Aunt Ruth. I hope she inspires you as much as she does me.
9 comments:
There was a report card (it's a yearly thing) just released... it said the airlines had their worst year ever from an on-time standpoint last year.
The airlines defense was that most delays are caused by the weather.
http://www.aqr.aero/track/index.htm
http://www.aqr.aero/aqrreports/AQR2007full.pdf
There you go - some recreational reading while you sit.
I'm an avionics engineer, and I would sure like to know why the flight crew needed to power-down the ship to, "reboot" the system.
Maybe you could ask the pilot when you get a chance.
The AQR annual report cards are based on monthly data gathered by the government.
You can download the raw data for delays at
http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Tables.asp?DB_ID=120&DB_Name=Airline%20On-Time%20Performance%20Data&DB_Short_Name=On-Time
Blogger didn't like that URL -- Try this
http://tinyurl.com/ytkj5a
Hope your flight takes off safely and soon - but you may get some small joy in knowing you've been Instalanched...
-- Kat
www.CatHouseChat.com
How is it that you have internet access on an airplane? Wireless? And which airline is it? (not very helpful concluding that all airlines have problems- I've found historically that United & American are much worse than Southwestern & Midwest)
My sympathies. Hope you get going soon.
I sat for three hours on the tarmac last month. From 6 to 9 am, and of course we missed our connecting flights.
It was a snowstorm though, so I can't exactly blame the airline. The pilot would get on the intercom and you could tell he was practically cussing. First they had to wait for the snow plows, then the deicing, and then the snow plow again (that the airport had only one was something that seemed to really annoy the pilot) and then the previous plowing was discovered to have resulted in ice over the entire runway and I think we had a second deicing of the plane and *then* we couldn't get back to the gate because all the gates were in use.
It's an adventure. :-)
Oh, and they permanently lost two of our checked bags in the stand-by and reroute process.
45 minutes? Holy cow. Man, I can't believe the ordeals Americans are forced to endure. You have my sympathies, dude. I hope you can recover from this hardship.
As a fellow strandee you have my sympathies.
I've spend more hours than I want to remember setting on tarmac waiting for:
1. weather
2. clearance
3. de-icing
4. runways to be cleared
5. maintenance
6. Your choice here
No fun, but at least we get there eventually.
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