SOL Tuesday: Air Travel Hell

            I’ve been traveling a lot lately, but last Thursday was probably the nadir. Here’s what happened.

            I was scheduled to fly out of LaGuardia on American Eagle nonstop to Dayton at 1:06 (I was headed to a college reunion in Yellow Springs). I arrived at the gate around 12:30 and everything was fine. About 10 minutes later, the flight had been postponed an hour and a half. Ten minutes after that, it was canceled. I was being picked up at the airport, so I first had to text my handler so the driver wouldn’t head to the airport.

           Next step: customer service desk, where a small line had formed. A text from American said I was rebooked the next morning on a 6 a.m. flight, but that was not going to happen. I was behind a woman with a young boy, who I later learned was 7. While mom was on her phone, the boy didn’t have any toy or book to occupy him, and he was clearly already extremely bored. It took almost an hour to get to the desk. Here I was offered the choice of the 1:06 flight the next day, or a 4:35 flight to Washington, D.C., connecting to a 10 p.m. flight to Dayton, getting me in at 11:35.

            Going home to return the next day felt like moving backward. Besides, flying to Ohio in the summertime is always iffy; a few years ago I’d been making this same trip and two flights were delayed by weather. Dayton is about a half-hour drive to my final destination, but it seemed hard to expect a volunteer driver to come get me late at night. If I could get a room at a hotel near the airport, it made more sense to take that choice.

            My phone gave me the number for a Hampton Inn, and I was able to get a room that night. And the clerk assured me that there was a 24-hour free shuttle bus. So I was soon on my way to D.C. And once there, lining up for the next leg, I was once again behind the woman and her son. Here’s where I learned that they had been in New York for an annual checkup with a doctor, where they had stayed in New Jersey, though on previous visits they had stayed at the Ronald McDonald House. This implied something serious, but the boy seemed totally normal and I hesitated to ask why he needed annual checkups with a doctor in another city.

            Finally, we arrive in Dayton, and I immediately call the hotel to find out where to find the hotel shuttle bus. The desk clerk tells me that there is no shuttle bus because the driver called in sick – and there is no backup driver. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. The desk clerk next tells me that he is the only person working, so there’s not even another staff person who could come get me.

            Fortunately, there were taxis at the airport, so I did get to the hotel. And the next morning, a volunteer from the reunion staff picked me up and got me to the reunion. Reunion was fun, and I danced for more than an hour at the Saturday night dance. And the two-hour delay on our flight home felt almost normal.