Sunday, November 4, 2007

Technical Difficulties?

I’m blogging at cha from the San Jose airport…where I have been, and will continue to, sit for hours. Apparently the plane that I should be on and 10 minutes closer to Chicago in is having a generator problem.

Ok fine…things happen…I get that. What I don’t get is this…the airline employee just came on over the loud speaker and said, “Ladies and gentlemen…may I have your attention. Our flight is going to be delayed this morning due to a generator problem in the plane. This is a very simple problem to fix, but our San Jose mechanics can’t fix it. So we have called the San Francisco mechanics and they will be coming down to fix the problem. This should take anywhere from one to two hours. Thank you for your patience.”

This information not only annoys me because I must remain here…sitting on the dirty airport floor, leaning against a trashcan…but it also worries me. Maybe I am reading this wrong, but it seems to me that the airline is basically saying, “our mechanics are incompetent.” Doesn’t inspire much confidence. Maybe I should always fly out of San Francisco now…at least their mechanics can fix a generator.

UPDATE: If you call United Airlines’ 800 number they will tell you that they can “provide you with up-to-the-minute information on flight arrivals and departures.” Well it is a good thing that I am smarter than the automated man…because he says that my flight is 2 hours delayed…but I know that it is FREAKING CANCELLED! It is also super than United has its act together and as a replacement for my 8 am flight they can get me on a red eye with a stopover in Phoenix if I haul ass to OAKLAND! Don’t worry I am smarter than that lady too and I got on a reasonable flight…I guess I’ll just hang out at the airport. It won’t be too bad…I have a whole clan of University of Washington marching band geeks who are kinda entertaining in a I-want-to-spoon-my-eyes-out-dear-god-I-hope-I-was-never-like-that kind of way.

2 comments:

Beverley Viljoen said...

Boo... you could have called me.

Sephyroth said...

I'm stopping by on my way to commenting on as many NaBloPoMo blogs as possible as part of the NaBloPoMo commenting challenge. :)

Yeah, that line about the "local" mechanics not being able to fix a simple problem definitely doesn't inspire confidence from me. I bet it was more complicated than they were letting y'all onto, or something... ;)

Sephyroth
http://www.sephyroth.net