Great thread, OP!
Originally Posted by
northwest_buckeye
Who reads their phone in an aircraft lav? Get in, get out.
To be fair, I usually have my phone out when I'm on a plane and pick it up to take with me to the lav vs. leaving it at my seat. Sometimes I'm inside the lav before I realize I have to put my phone in my pocket, esp. if I happen to be sitting right next to it. For whatever reason, those have a higher frequency of being the flights where I maybe have a couple drinks, and thus have to pee, and thus perhaps have a higher likelihood of missing my pocket when my elbow hits the inside wall of a 737's mini-lav.
Originally Posted by
HDQDD
Once had a ramper loading a 777 for the TATL flight point out that a kennel that was too small for the dog. A discussion between myself (ramp supv) and a CS supv ensued and we agreed that it was in fact too small. There are rules about the dog has to be able to stand up and turn around, etc. etc. Anyway, this was only 10 or so minutes before departure (dogs are loaded last into the bulk pit of 777s). So we checked with everyone inside UA that might have a kennel, and we got lucky that cargo had one that was big enough. So we sent a ramper to go get it. It's a long trek to the cargo area and back and by the time everything was sorted, we took a 20 minute delay. Ops also tried to stick that one to the ramp, but I got it (properly) coded to CS, since they never should have accepted the dog at check in. Put a nice letter in the ramper's file for doing the right thing and reporting it. With recent events it may be hard to believe that UA actually cared about a dog.
^
I like to believe for every story we see in the news about something terrible happening on a flight, there's another five or ten others out there more similar to this one where someone actively did something right and we never heard about it.
Originally Posted by
Qwkynuf
Two years ago yesterday, flying home from IAD on a Friday evening. Itinerary has my flight departing around 5pm with a 40 minute connection at DTW to the last PDX flight of the night. It hasn't been a great trip. My customer had been a giant pain in the ..., including basically blowing me off for the last 2 hours while I kept reminding him that I really needed to get going. Had a heck of a time finding gas for my rental car (the station that my customer recommended was closed...), so by the time I returned the car and at the counter to check my bags (have to check my tool kit, so I usually check my suitcase too), I am at 45 minutes from departure. So naturally, it's gate B78. The check in lady helpfully says "You should hurry - boarding will start in 10 minutes".
I fly in/out of IAD regularly and always grouse to myself about DL having those two gates all the way at the butt-end of B. It got me thinking/realizing, DL seems to have a habit of somehow selecting/getting gates at the far end of concourses at most of their outstations I can remember. PHL, MIA, DFW, BDL,...seems like I'm always trekking to the far reaches of the terminal to get my DL flight.
As for my own story, it seems most of my delays are plain ol' WX so nothing exciting about the cause. But I have a good memory of a particularly bad WX delay in PHL where the whole airport was shut for a couple hours while an especially nasty line of summer thunderstorms blew through - this was one of those that knocked out power and threw over trees and stuff, something the Weather Channel would give a name nowadays. We had started boarding our flight before the storm hit, hoping to push and get in the air before the storm hit, but I guess it came in faster than they thought and the airport started getting pounded just as the final pax boarded. Capt came on the PA and said we'd give it a few minutes to see if maybe we can sneak out between storm bands or something. About 15 mins later he comes back on and says it's not looking good, and anyone who wants off the plane can leave; then GA announces that they are allowing all flights to de-plane, but don't go far as they'll make terminal wide announcements when they're going to start re-boarding everyone.
I was in FC and decided to stay on board where I had a nice book and PDBs were flowing. Maybe half the plane decided to go wait things out in the terminal. Shortly after that, a redcoat comes on board and announces that pizzas have arrived in the terminal if anyone is hungry. She then hangs up the PA and reveals to the FC cabin that she has a stack of menus from one of the restaurants in the terminal - her only ask is we don't order anything too involved. A bunch of us (including me) order sandwiches and stuff, redcoat leaves, and 20 mins later she and a GA return with a bunch of to-go boxes. We tried to pay for our food and she said DL was taking care of it...eventually one lady suggested she just take the money and apply it to a charity drive on behalf the PHL station or something like that. I don't remember details other than at some point I handed someone $10 that went in a pile that went to the redcoat and GA. I didn't even care if they just pocketed it as a tip. Eventually pushed back over 2.5 hours late and spent another long while in line for takeoff - pilot floored it on the way to ATL and I think we wound up getting in 3 hours later than scheduled after all that, but it was the happiest plane full of delayed pax I'd ever seen.
Still one of my favorite DL stories to tell. Lots of good memories of the PHL staff when I was a regular up there.