My plane clapped two weeks ago after a Murphys Law trip. Glad to be there, only 5.5 hours late, glad to be on the ground in one piece.

DFW, planes on time, except ours. AA could not find a crew. Find crew, we board. Plane broke, maybe an hour to fix, they let us deplane. (Guess they learned from kidnapping all those pax the week before?) Plane scrapped, find substitute at another terminal, transfer all catering and baggage to new plane. Oops, now its snowing, must deice. Pushback and pilot sez "Well if we deice in 20 min we go. If deice takes 40 min your substitute flight crew runs out of legal time and we return to gate." Right to deice and take off. Murphys not done with us yet. Nice flight over the clouds until stuck in a holding pattern over Georgia. Not going to attempt landing in current weather, got to let that front push a little further south, the front that made those killer tornados near Orlando six hours later, there we are flying right on the edge of it. Yes the whole plane clapped when the brakes came on.

Plusses for AA. They got me home safe ^. They refused to fly a broke plane ^, they refused to fly an illegal crew ^, the pilot did not try to land in a thunderstorm. ^ These matter, late does not.

Although they did not announce it, for pax who ordered a drink the FA's did not collect any money. Yes, free drinks in Y.^ (Pay attention NW and DL, this is called Customer Service 101).