My first disclaimer is that I make no claim that it was the worst travel day, ever, since the institution of the category.

That’s a high bar I don’t ever want to cross, not with the Tenerlife crash, the Hindenburg explosion, and the sinking of the Titanic as powerful precedents, and as far as I am concerned those records are just fine staying where they are. I got to my destination alive and unhurt. Yay. It was a successful day.

Nor could it be the worst travel day I have experienced personally, when that one involved a 12-hour delay leaving the ground in a filthy plane with overflowing ashtrays, and an interval flying low over Europe during which, every time it rained outside the plane, it also rained inside the plane, the downpour centered on my row, my aisle, my seat, with my fellow passengers handing me umbrellas and the flight attendants taking them away. People refuse to believe that this actually happened, but it happened.

But my flight from Fort Lauderdale to White Plains, last week, did manage to be a distant second.

I got through security at 6 AM, ready to board a plane set to take off at 7:35.

At a quarter to seven the hapless passengers were apprised that this would be delayed by one hour, because our plane was late coming in from Los Angeles. We would have to wait until those passengers disembarked and the plane was serviced.

The plane didn’t actually land until 8:30. At this point we were told that the plane had won an inspection lottery. Apparently, at random intervals, a certain plane is picked out of a hat to be inspected by the FAA. It doesn’t matter if the plane is already late and if passengers are waiting. The plane has to be surprise-inspected then and everybody has to wait. The delay could be anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours, depending on any issues found.

Well, I confess that if this helps safety in air travel I can only approve, paying the price in inconvenience what we all gain in safety, and so I joined the increasingly unruly crowd waiting as the hapless gate agent kept relaying updates, none of them good.

The inspection will last at least another forty minutes. The inspection will last at least another half hour after that. The inspection will last…

…at a certain point, it was announced that while the tires on the plane were perfectly acceptable for another flight, the inspectors had ordered that those tires needed some preventative maintenance, and so the plane was taxied across the airport to a location where that maintenance was to be performed before the plane was brought back. They ran into delays there, each carefully reported to us, but eventually the plane was brought back, and, yes, the inspection team had to be summoned from whatever interim place they’d gone, to look at the plane and kick the tires and announce that all was well.

At this point it was about 12:30, some two hours after we should have already landed at our destination. Also at this point, having accidentally jostled a lady with the bag I had hanging from my shoulder, almost knocking her over, I was treated to cries of, “YOU’RE AN ANIMAL! YOU’RE A SUBHUMAN ANIMAL!” I ascertained what the problem was, apologized, only to be assured, some more, that I was a member of the animal kingdom. At which point, surrounded by a large and fascinated crowd, I said, “Lady, there is a difference between jostling somebody, which I did and which I apologize for, and screaming hatred in the center of a mob, in pre-riot conditions; one is an accident, and one is reckless disregard for human life. I apologized. Now you should take that and shut up.”

The plane is boarded, somehow, despite passengers swarming the gate in a state of near-panic, ignoring the regular advisements that they need to step back and let everybody else proceed in the order as called. We get to our seats, and after a further delay, the plane finally leaves the gate and heads for the runway.

Where we sit.

And sit.

And sit.

Then the Captain gets on the intercom and explains that the navigation computer has a software problem, one that will not permit taking off. They will now turn off the engines and let everything reboot in the hope that this solves the problem.

They do this. Fifteen minutes of waiting to see if this works.

Nope, it doesn’t work.

We have to return to the gate, where a tech crew will board.

At the gate, some people understandably say that they have had it, and want out. The crew says that they can leave if they want to, but that all luggage aboard the plane is still going to White Plains, where any unclaimed parcel will be laboriously reloaded and sent back to Fort Lauderdale. They further explain that, within minutes, if the computer cannot be fixed, it will simply be removed and replaced, an operation that will take no more than fifteen minutes, if passengers will only give them this one last bit of cooperation.

People are now standing in the aisles, loudly expressing their dissatisfaction.

The Captain gets on the intercom again and says, look, we apologize for all this, but there is a regulation that we are not able to test the repairs unless every passenger is seated. If you’re going to get off the plane, get off the plane. If you’re going to stay on the plane, stay seated. If you remain standing in the aisles we will have to give the order to disembark.

The passengers remain pissed off and standing.

The Captain gets on the intercom again and says, look, we apologize for all this, but there is a regulation that we are not able to test the repairs unless every passenger is seated. If you’re going to get off the plane, get off the plane. If you’re going to stay on the plane, stay seated. If you remain standing in the aisles we will have to give the order to disembark.

The passengers remain pissed off and standing.

The Captain gets on the intercom again and says, look, we apologize for all this, but there is a regulation that we are not able to test the repairs unless every passenger is seated. If you’re going to get off the plane, get off the plane. If you’re going to stay on the plane, stay seated. If you remain standing in the aisles we will have to give the order to disembark.

The passengers remain pissed off and standing.

This has been going on for twenty minutes. People are paying no attention at all.

The Captain gets on the intercom and says, I can give no further warnings. You are preventing this service from being done. Please, make a decision, everybody. Either leave the plane or take your seats. Otherwise we will have to give the order to disembark.

Everybody continues to mill about. That noise the Captain was making? This doesn’t apply to them, it doesn’t apply to anybody. They remain pissed off and standing in the aisles, because this is productive behavior.

At long last, the Captain gets back on the intercom and says, Look, I’m sorry, but I have asked you five times, and I can give you no more time to comply. We are giving the order to deplane.

Screeches of dismay from everybody. They have had no warning at all that this would happen. So we all head out into a terminal that is now showing the effects of the cascade of schedule disruption, standing room only, people still clustered around the gate like hungry animals, as if they intend on storming the jetway the second the gate agent is looking.

Getting past that crowd into the terminal proper is nearly impossible, because nobody will get the hell out of the way. There is a crowded line for lunch vouchers, and all I have to report about the next hour is that there are no seats available anywhere in sight nd that two people suggest I take the one unoccupied seat, one labeled for handicapped passengers that has a standing puddle of something I suspect to be urine at its lowest point.

When the plane is ready, this time for sure, about forty minutes later, loading the passengers takes three times the length of time it should because they are still boarding by sections and nobody will get out of the way for anyone else, even when the gate agent is making his third consecutive announcement that they’re not helping by slowing down all the people with special needs. Again, near-riot conditions.

I would like to note, at this point, that we would all still be on the plane, and long gone, if the passengers had paid attention to the Captain’s requests in the first place.

We finally take off at 3 PM. Eight hours late.

After a fortunately unremarkable flight, where the flight crew mollifies our presumed festering rage by giving everybody two bags of pretzels instead of just one — yay! — we land around 6 PM.

At Westchester County airport, we are asked to please stay in our seats so that one orthodox Jewish family in the rear can deplane first, in an attempt to get home in time by the onset of the Sabbath.

This is, I think, a minor request, even given what we have all been through.

Everybody nods and everybody says sure and at the moment we stop at the gate everybody stands up and gets into the aisle anyway, to rifle through their overhead bins.

Again the flight crew requests: please, we are asking you to let this one family through.

Everybody says sure and this is wholly reasonable and nobody sits down.

The family gets through the crowd, somehow, and then the rest of us deplane, and we get to the airport’s one luggage carousel, where we are now treated to the paranoia that our bags might suffer the fate of the bags left by the people who quit in disgust and never came back to their seats: to wit, they might be reloaded aboard another flight and sent back to Fort Lauderdale, despite us waiting for them.

The Orthodox family is trapped with us, waiting for their bags – and I confess some irritation with them, because, really, their attempt to save some time is pointless, if they had checked luggage like the rest of us. Their luggage will come out when it comes out.

It takes fifteen minutes before the first bag takes its long ride around the carousel. Nobody claims it. It makes the circle again. Nobody claims it. A third time. Nobody claims it.

No other bags are coming through. Something is wrong.

Then a few more bags start appearing, and everybody is now in a state of high suspense: will their own appear? The conveyer belt stops. Something has gotten stuck in the mechanism.

Two minutes only, this time, but endless, you know? Especially since two other planes have arrived at the same time as our long-delayed one, and there is no other place for all those expectant passengers to arrive except in the room we’re in, and the press of the rapidly growing crowd is all inward, toward the conveyer belt.

Somebody starts yelling at someone else for stepping on her dog…

…and, thank Gawd, when the conveyer belt starts again, my bag is among the very next.

I grab it and get what I can now only describe as the living fuck out of there.

This was not quite rock-bottom, folks. As I assure you, I got there. And I need to establish one thing, worth noting: that all this is remarkable enough to tell goes along with the countering truth that my experience with air travel has almost never been like this. This was a day of constant, non-stop dysfunction, much of it from passengers who refused to listen.

But I hope not to have a day this bad for a long, long time.

Tags: Assholes, True Stories | Category Humor, Life Wisdom, True Stories