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October 24, 2007
Still. At. The. Airport.
Good lord, why me?
Upon arriving at the Fort Lauderdale airport today (having already endured a horrid ordeal with a tardy shuttle bus driver and a rude Holiday Inn staffer), I discovered a line a the United Airlines counter stretching back to the far corner of the airport.
At first, I was relieved to see that my flight was delayed, since that meant I wouldn't necessarily miss it while standing in the check-in line. But then I realized that the reason the line was so long was that the flight was not really "delayed" so much as MIA. Rumor had it that the original plane had massive engine failure and another was being sought. The line of people ahead of me were trying to get re-routed, and in some cases were having to spend an extra night in town.
I got on the phone with a United representative--after a solid 13 minutes of negotiating their stupid voice answering system (soothing man's voice, 'I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. Please say your confirmation code again"--and was dismayed to discover that 1) our connection was bad, 2) English was probably her third language, and 3) the term 'gross incompetence" was coined just for her.
She put me on a different flight via US Airways, which should have routed me through Philadelphia. So I traipsed over to the US Airways counter, where the check-in person told me that the flight was overbooked (and had been since yesterday) and there was no way I was going to make it to Philadelphia. Moreover, she had no record from United that I had been transferred over there, and the confirmation code I had received from Ms. Incompetent wasn't showing up in the system. She handed me my ID back, wished me luck, and went on to the next person.
So I walked back to the United line, which hadn't moved six inches in the 45 minutes since I'd first arrived, when I happened to overhear another person saying that the original United flight to DC had been moved to 4:30 p.m. since they had found a plane in working order that was being flown to Fort Lauderdale at that very moment.
I cornered a Broward County Airport representative (since there wasn't a United person in sight, other than the three dealing with the rebookings a half mile away) who confirmed this news and told me to go have lunch somewhere and come back to check in later.
That's what I did, dear reader, and only had to stand in line another 30 minutes when I returned. And now I'm waiting patiently at my gate, where I have been told that the plane might leave around 5 p.m. Of course, there is nothing on the board to indicate that the plane is on it's way (a simple "delayed" is all that's next to our flight number), and so I remain suspicious.
Will Ms. Write Again Soon ever get home? Has her airport luck run out completely? Given that she only brought one outfit for two days of work (in an admittedly stupid oversight), will she end up wearing these clothes for a third day in a row? Tune in next time to find out the thrilling conclusion to Why South Florida Sucks Balls.
