Flying...

Air travel was once prestigious. Business travelers darted about the world sipping cocktails and staring at the butts of 20-something stewardesses.

My Alaska flight this morning was delayed 30 minutes. Of course, they also listed it as "on time" with a "new time" of 10:30pm.

This must be some curious usage of the phrase 'on time' that I was not previously aware...

Sitting in the gate area, I looked across to the far terminal seeing various Alaska planes sitting on the tarmac. In fact, the one immediately in front of me is clearly scarred along the fuselage near the starboard engine, which itself has some carbon scoring on the tail-cone. A little man is looking around inside the engine. I'm assuming he's trying to figure out what made it catch fire.

Then my flight was delayed another 30 minutes. At least. Maybe. Apparently there is some mechanical issue with the speed brake. Given that this is critical to stopping the plane, I'm fine with waiting for them to fix it. The problem is we have a meeting at 1pm. Checking around for alterative routes, we just missed the option of a San Francisco flight because their first estimate lured us into a false sense of security.

Then the flight was cancelled, and everyone rushed the counter to rebook for the next flight leaving at 12:20pm. Given that puts us in about 3 hours late for our meeting, I'll be rebooking my return flight as well.

Prestigious. My ass. In the time it has taken me today to actually make this flight, I could have been there via high-speed train. If we had any...

(no subject)

After having the meeting moved back 2:30 hours, we made it and it was pretty productive--and danamongden was in fact present at said meeting. The return flight was of course an hour late leaving Oakland due to more mechanical issues.

Day-tripping down to Cali via airlines: suxor.

At least I get to sleep in the comforts of my own bed.