I decided that I am cursed with my recent flights. Each flight is trying to top the other one as the worst flying experience. Clearly, the flying gods are against me. It all started with these flights.
Flight 1 - Newark to Denver. Okay, there really wasn't anything wrong with this flight other than I had very little sleep and my seat was surrounded by high school kids going on a skiing trip.
Flight 2 - Denver to Portland. Another confession - there really wasn't anything wrong with this flight at all. The one annoying thing about the flight was the behavior of the United gate agents in Denver. Holy Cow. United has created all of these status levels (first, business, economy plus, silver, gold, super super duper elite, close to sainthood, regular coach) and they made sure to board each status with very elaborate staging of the pathway that people should take with their boarding passes. Many of us rolled our eyes at their weird rituals.
I started to think that things had turned the corner with my recent flying problems. I was wrong.
Flight 3 - Portland to Washington Dulles. I really don't know where to start. Another early flight. We board. The woman in the aisle across from me came to her seat and immediately started bitching to her husband about the flight attendant (called cyborg from now on) who wouldn't let her sit in one of the empty economy plus seats (the gate agent from Denver would have murdered her with laser eyes if she had attempted that move on her). The next thing I know, the captain comes to talk to her. Apparently, she was quite rude to Cyborg and he wants to know if she is going to be a problem. This woman starts explaining how she needs to do a lot of work and when the person in front of her puts their seat back, she has problems using her laptop. He explains that is why she should request Economy Plus when booking a ticket or checking in. She becomes defensive about how she was never given that option (lies, lies, lies, lies because United asks you when using self check-in if you want to upgrade. At this point, I was regretting not paying the extra cash to get far away from this woman). He wasn't entirely convinced that she was going to be stable and would have to check with Cyborg. I should mention that his instinct should have been to kick her off to save me grief and at this point I had not viewed the flight attendant she tussled with. I only wondered why he had to check with the flight attendant and couldn't make his own decision.
I quickly realized who was the other player in this scenario when the woman not-so-quietly pointed her out to her husband. It put the captain's attitude into perspective but I was surprised that anyone would even mess with her. She was the most robotic and intimidating human being I had ever encountered. Woman stays on flight and annoys me throughout the entire flight.
Our flight is delayed because we don't have any water pressure. No water pressure means no water in the bathroom, coffee or tea. Mechanic comes and tries to fix things. Doesn't work. Portable water and sanitary wipes are delivered. We take off and magically we have water pressure.
Throughout the flight, I am aware that a very strange woman is sitting in the row behind me. She is in the window seat and I am in the aisle seat. She seemed a little off - either drunk or on drugs. Our descent into Dulles was hell. We rocked and swayed a lot. This woman threw up the entire time. She didn't do this quietly. She sounded like she was dying and wanted everyone on the plane to hear. It was bad and it smelled even worse. She wasn't the only one because the flight attendants distributed at least three other trash bags to people. At this point, I had the satisfaction of snapping at the woman next to me in front of the Cyborg who exchanged a creepy smile with me. Grrr...
Flight #4 - Dulles to Newark. Delayed due to wind. No shit. I was supposed to land at 6:30 and I didn't get in until after 8. I missed the first episode of the Sopranos. I will say that the flight ended up being very smooth, the flight attendant was great, and they didn't board us until a reasonable time before we could actually take off.
I really don't enjoy flying anymore.
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