During our extra day in Portland, I had time to reflect on what a mess the aviation system seems to have degenerated into. With the exception of our Narita to Portland flight back on July 24th, every single trip I took in the last month suffered from some kind of delay or other mishap.
First, at 11:30pm on Wednesday, August 8th, the security line at PDX was somehow still 45 minutes long. Then the flight to Chicago was delayed, but only by a half hour. Based on previous experience (I haven't flown domestically since 2003), I figured that would be my only problem on the trip. Chicago proved me wrong, when my plane didn't arrive until an hour after it was supposed to take off. By that time the crew still hadn't arrived, and when they finally showed up the gate agent began boarding only to halt it within two minutes becuase (I'm not making this up) the plane had "a belly ache."
When I made it to Philly at 2:30 I figured I'd just stick around until my father landed around five. I headed over to the Marriot for a cheesesteak and a beer. Walking back to the terminal around 3:30, I saw that my dad's flight had been delayed an hour. By the time I made it back to Terminal D, it was delayed two hours. Turns our we were caught in the middle of
this. The FAA apparently closed Philly to traffic at some point in the afternoon, because of a nasty thunderstorm to the west that ended up dumping nothing more than a light sprinkle on the Philadelphia area.
At 6:30 I got a phone call from my dad, saying that his direct flight from Portland to Philly was sitting on a runway in Raleigh, NC for refueling. At 8:30, he finally landed. At 9:30, he finally made it to the baggage claim area. At 10:30, we finally found his bags. By 11:45, we finally had the keys to our rental car and were on our way to Reading.
On my way back to Portland, I mistakenly assumed that nothing at Philly would have time to go wrong before a 6:55 flight. At 5:45, the check-in line was taking about half an hour to pass through (I noticed this was because a lot of people don't understand the automated systems, and there were no human staff to be found. The rest of the world still uses agents.), so by the time I made it to the front, the computer wouldn't let me check my bags. I threw a fit until a manager showed up and checked them for me, then ran upstairs to see a security line stretching back into the parking garage (I wish that were hyperbole, but it isn't). At 6:25, a United agent came and started pulling people with early flights out of the line. There were so many of us that the new, abbreviated line still took 25 minutes to get through. I sprinted (in flip-flops, with two broken toes) to the gate at 6:49 and, out of breath, asked if I could still get on the plane. They let me on, I called my mom to tell her all was well, and then we sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half because the FAA had halted traffic to Chicago. My scheduled layover had only been two hours, so when we landed in Chicago I again sprinted through the terminal until I found an information screen telling me that my flight to Portland was also delayed, this time for an hour. I found a restaraunt, had a sandwich and a bloody mary, and waited until it was time to leave.
Now to this weeks adventures. First of all, keep in mind that
we bought these tickets in April. I also think it's probably reasonable to assume that $1300 per person constitutes "full fare". We arrived at the airport a full two and a half hours early. When we checked in (again on one of those damned automated systems), the computer was unable to give us seat assignments. We asked an agent, who told us to inquire at the gate. We did, and they told us to "please wait and we will call you in about 20 minutes." We waited 30, until the flight started boarding, before lining up on our own initiative. A number of other passengers were in the same boat, because it took us about 20 minutes to speak to the gate agent. When we finally did, she looked up (and seemed fairly terrified about doing so) and just said, "I have some bad news."
Northwest oversold the flight, and for some reason decided to just not let us on, instead of asking for volunteers as I've seen done before. Now the best part, since we were being denied boarding involuntarily, our bags were sent on to Tokyo! So we got to stay an extra day in Portland with no clothes, toiletries, or anything, really. When it became clear that we were spending another night in town, I thought about telling them I had family and friends in the area, but thought better of it, just to see what they'd give us. What we ended up with was a decent hotel, $40 worth of food vouchers, $750 each in NW airlines vouchers, and new tickets for the following day, first from Portland to LAX on Alaska Air, and then LAX to NRT (in business class, no less).
So after heading to the Portland Airport at noon Monday, we eventually made it home to our cats at 6pm Wednesday. Business class was nice (OK, I had free champagne, smoked salmon, a cheese plate, and a seat that fully reclined into a bed. It was real nice), but we're both still pretty unimpressed with US airlines at the moment.
