This one did not get off to the best of starts--normally, CHA allows persons other than the passenger to go past security. This morning, they were not allowing it. Apparently, the X-ray machine was down and they were having to hand-search every bag. One shudders to think of the chaos you'd get at Hartsfield under the circumstances...

Flights are pretty uneventful (I slept thru them...) except for a baggage-claim machine that kept stopping for no apparent reason.

Philly was ok (hotel--Holiday Airport--under renovation, so no restaurant--hit Philly Diner instead). Lunch at Uno in the (254-year-old) New Market (not quite as screwy a name as the Pont Neuf, but it'll do), one of two pizzerie I make a point of hitting whenever I'm in a town that has one.

Get to the airport around 4:30 for a 6:05 departure. It took a while to tell the guy what flight i was on (silly me, I forgot the number), a few hundred keystrokes later (and an attempt to confirm that I'm going to Charleston--which I'm not, that's CHS, we're CHA, we had CHA ever since it was a train-depot code), he's taken me off the flight, indicating they expect to cancel for mechanical difficulties, and manages to confirm me on the 5:40. (Better plane too--the original would have been a DC9, and my hips--even just counting the bones--are wider than its seats; the new plane is an Airbus.) This leaves me not-quite enough time to eat, so the burger comes on the plane with me. As we wait, and wait... the FA gets on the intercom and tells three standby passengers to get off the plane! Apparently, they did in fact cancel the 6:05, and decided to have the crew deadhead with us. (No repeat of the Delta fiasco--they made them sit in the same middle seats the standbys had been given.) One more standby was sent off later, then we finally push back... and are now #15 in line. Amazingly, we make it only five minutes after I was originally supposed to be there... and as I head for my gate, I notice a California Pizza Kitchen (the other one I cannot resist). Needless to say, by the time I get that, we're boarding, and that comes on too.

To add one final touch of weirdness, the F/A on the leg home announces, "If your itinerary involves a connection on US Airways or US Airways Express in Chattanooga, please check the television monitors..." I am amazed the entire plane didn't fall into the aisle laughing. CHA doesn't have any monitors, and any US or US* flight from CHA would take you right back to CLT! (The only way you can connect other than an interline in Chattanooga at all is to take DL* ATL-CHA-CVG--but why?)

[This message has been edited by silverpie (edited 05-04-99).]