"emergency" catering in Longview, TX (thanks AA!)
 

I'm sitting on AA399 (MSP-DFW) on the ground in Longview, TX (this airport is so small, I don't think it has a 3-letter code!) waiting out tonight's weather in DFW - and they've just served us dinner! Well, it was burgers from a local restaurant, but it sure beat the Bistro Bag! (Can you imagine working at the burger joint and getting an order for 138 burgers to go?)

Thanks AA!

(Still waiting for the weather to clear in Dallas....)

GGG (Gregg County Municipal Airport)

It's not a popular airport, but the runway is around 11,000 feet long. My grandmother lived on Lake Cherokee next door, and she said huge military planes used to fly overhead, practicing take-offs and landings at GGG.

Being an AA monopoly airport, it's expensive to fly there. Enjoy your free GGG stopover. :)

And if you are still reading this, it is still raining and thundering in DFW (live 2 miles away) hope they opened the airport once the light show stopped, enjoy that burger, might be breakfast too.

heh. just pulled up this flight on a real-time flight tracking site. looks like it took off from longview at 8:30, and went straight into a holding pattern for an hour. hope it gets to dallas!

Sounds like Dallas got abolsutely nailed last night with rain. I imagine it was not a fun night to fly in to or out of DFW.

Yup we took off from GGG and went right into a holding pattern, watching those huge thunderstorms sail by on the left, then right, then left, then right.. It was quite an amazing display - there were two enormous electrical storm cells that we were watching - each of them generated at least one lightning bolt every second, without letup, over the course of at least 90 minutes. Glad I wasn't on the ground underneath that!

We finally landed at around 10:45pm - six hours late. Eight hours of butt-in-seat time - very glad I got a mainline MSP-DFW flight instead of Eagle!

Amazingly, despite the endless delays, pax were generally in good spirits throughout the flight. The extra catering we took on in Longview - especially the burgers that the pilot arranged for - were very much appreciated, as was the very hard work and cheerful attitude of the cabin crew.

In my opinion, AA's people turned a bad situation around and scored major goodwill points with everyone on board that plane!!

Good to hear that, and may I venture a suggestion - take a few minutes to write about the expoerience to AA. There is 'contact AA' button under the 'customer relations' tab, and I'm sure the crew will be happy to hear about your sentiments. This will also encourage future captains in similar irregular conditions to look after their passengers just as well.

I still have a trip pending to Longview, nice to know that I should have dinner before getting on the plane ;)

:confused: Don't they serve tortilla-free tacos there? You don't have to eat burgers from a local burger joint. :)

I will make an exception and sample the delicacies from the local burger joint ;)

This trip to Longview has been postponed more times than J-Lo and Ben Affleck's wedding, and might have the same result, not happening.

Grew up 40 miles from Longview
 

I grew up 40 miles from Longivew and if your burgers were from The Butcher Shop, they were tasty indeed. There are plenty of good restaurants there, including local favorite Johnny Cace's for seafood. We used to go to Longivew when we wanted to get a bite to eat or see a movie b/c my hometown of Carthage was even smaller! :D

Trust me... it wasn't. After AA cancelled all the flights out of DEN, we managed to find the ONE carrier still going to DFW... F9. We didn't take off from DEN until around 11 MST and then we got to our gate at DFW at 2 am. The airport itself was a zoo... people everywhere and flights on some carriers (like HP) that were STILL trying to board and take off from the afternoon. The taxi lines were outrageously long and police were directing terminal traffic. Folks were fighting so hard to get on the Terminal Link shuttles that a passenger broke the door on one (putting it out of commission) while shoving ahead of the others to get on. I arrived home around 3 am only to leave at 6:30 to head to ATL today where we are now sitting and watching the delays start piling up again this afternoon.