This is a close-up of the cockpit:
The RAF looks like it must be fun.
About Me
- THORSSOLI
- I make toys for kids who don't want to grow up. I'm on the lookout for new projects. If you're interested in commissioning me to build something ridiculous, shoot me an email.
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Friday, June 25, 2010
Cool
This is a British Royal Air Force Tornado G4 fighter jet. It costs something like $30million and is capable of speeds in excess of 1,400 miles per hour:
This is a close-up of the cockpit:
The RAF looks like it must be fun.
This is a close-up of the cockpit:
The RAF looks like it must be fun.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Finally, a Day I'd Call Busy
After a few weeks of waiting, I finally gave up on the Navy Reserve sending me off to Pearl Harbor for my two weeks of annual training. I wasn't terribly upset about it though and actually started stacking up things to do over the next two weeks instead. In fact, the night before yesterday I was tinkering on the boat until the wee hours of yesterday morning, secure in the knowledge that I'd have weeks to catch up on my sleep.
When I rolled over yesterday morning (the ninth of June) at around 9 am, I checked my phone and noticed that I had a number of emails. Three of them were notifications that my orders had come through. I was due to report in Hawaii on the morning of the 11th, so I was flying out of SFO at 0913 on the tenth. This gave me just a scant 24 hours to go and I was going to need every single one of them.
Here's the to-do list I scribbled out as I was getting out of bed:
Thank you and goodnight.
When I rolled over yesterday morning (the ninth of June) at around 9 am, I checked my phone and noticed that I had a number of emails. Three of them were notifications that my orders had come through. I was due to report in Hawaii on the morning of the 11th, so I was flying out of SFO at 0913 on the tenth. This gave me just a scant 24 hours to go and I was going to need every single one of them.
Here's the to-do list I scribbled out as I was getting out of bed:
- Drop off and feed the dogs at the folks' house
- Run boxes to post office and pick up undelivered packages waiting for me there
- Grab breakfast at a coffee shop while sorting through outstanding orders online
- Get a haircut
- Pick up boxes and shipping supplies
- Build, box, and ship unfilled customer orders
- Pack uniforms, civilian clothes, camera, and dive mask for trip to Hawaii
- Replace oil absorbent pads in the bilges of the Heart of Gold
- Attend an opera with Rose
- Meet up with the usual crowd for dinner
- Find all of the power cords and chargers for portable electronics
- Clear-cut all of the weeds growing in the dog pen
- Visit with mom at the office
- Gas up the car
- Arrange cash payment for canvas boat cover
- Take in buckets of caffeine
Thank you and goodnight.
Monday, January 4, 2010
I Need to Hurry Up and Get Wealthy
For those of you who don't know, I flew from Singapore to San Francisco via Tokyo the other day. The ship had pulled into drydock and they really don't need a navigator aboard while the whole thing is up on blocks getting repainted and having a bunch of engineering repairs and upgrades taken care of.
Per the union's contract with the company, if they need me to fly anywhere they are obligated to send me via Business class or better. In the past I'd never really given it much thought. After all, if you're only going to be on a plane for a few hours, what's the point in spending hundreds of dollars for a slightly better seat. I'm the "average-sized" person that we were told to design things for in my engineering classes, so it's not like I really need the extra space.
But extra space is not all you get.
The 3rd Mate (Jim) and I arrived at the airport with almost three hours to spare. We were flying with All Nippon Airways. Once we were checked in (via the much shorter, faster-moving "business & first-class" line), the attendant told us how to get to their lounge. The lounge is reserved for business and first-class customers and I was just figuring it was a nice place to sit away from all of the noise of the main concourse.
I was wrong.
Inside there was free wireless internet (saving me as much as $12 compared to other air travel experiences), a buffet breakfast (saving $10 to $35), a complimentary magazine rack (saving as much as $20 depending on how much I read), and a nice coffee service along with a very large selection of complimentary soft drinks (saving at least $3 a round).
Per the union's contract with the company, if they need me to fly anywhere they are obligated to send me via Business class or better. In the past I'd never really given it much thought. After all, if you're only going to be on a plane for a few hours, what's the point in spending hundreds of dollars for a slightly better seat. I'm the "average-sized" person that we were told to design things for in my engineering classes, so it's not like I really need the extra space.
But extra space is not all you get.
The 3rd Mate (Jim) and I arrived at the airport with almost three hours to spare. We were flying with All Nippon Airways. Once we were checked in (via the much shorter, faster-moving "business & first-class" line), the attendant told us how to get to their lounge. The lounge is reserved for business and first-class customers and I was just figuring it was a nice place to sit away from all of the noise of the main concourse.
I was wrong.
Inside there was free wireless internet (saving me as much as $12 compared to other air travel experiences), a buffet breakfast (saving $10 to $35), a complimentary magazine rack (saving as much as $20 depending on how much I read), and a nice coffee service along with a very large selection of complimentary soft drinks (saving at least $3 a round).
In addition to the monetary savings, there was also the sanity savings. There was no mad rush of people pressing through airport shops and restaurants with screaming children and piles of bags stopping everything up. Instead it was actually a pretty relaxing experience.
Once we were on the plane I found out that drinks were free as well. Normally I don't drink on a plane if I have to pay for it, but since it was free I figured "why not?"
"Why not," indeed. By the time I'd landed at SFO, I'd had two mimosas, a bloody mary, six (maybe eight) glasses of a very nice chardonnay, two doubles of Bailey's Irish Cream on the rocks, a shot of Cointreau, and two glasses of red wine (saving something like $90). In fact, on the first flight, I'm convinced that the only thing the little Japanese flight attendant could say in English was:
"Sir, would you rike more wine?"
That was nice.
The meal service on both legs of the trip was pretty nice too. I had a surprisingly decent steak on the first leg and rack of lamb on the second. Then there were the desserts:
So I'm not exactly sure how much extra cost is involved in flying business class, but it looks like I saved around $160 worth of little things I'd've had to pay for separately if I was flying economy. Now I just need to find out if that's enough to pay the difference. If not, I'll have to hurry up and find a way to make enough money to not notice the difference between the ticket prices.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Impractical Military Vehicle of the Week: the Baumgartl Heliofly
When it comes to wild ideas for military vehicles in World War II, the Germans always seemed to take the lead. While most of these concepts never managed to get off the ground, the Heliofly actually did. Literally.
Paul Baumgartl started tinkering with the idea in the mid-1930s. What he originally saw as a toy for wealthy sportsmen evolved into a revolutionary transportation gimmick for the German Army. The concept was to strap a miniature helicopter onto an infantryman's back, making the German supersoldier able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The first version (Heliofly I) was built and ready for testing in 1941:
With no tail rotor or counterweight to offset the torque of the spinning rotor blades, the device amounted to little more than an autogyro glider that would slow the pilot's (aka the impending casualty's) descent to a very hard landing. Any sudden increase in throttle would've sent the pilot spinning around the shaft in the opposite direction of the rotors. In effect, Baumgartl had developed a flying, twirling, vomit sprinkler.
The improved version conceived for military use consisted of a pair of rotor blades that would rotate in opposite directions around a common vertical shaft. Each rotor was independantly powered by a small engine that would also rotate around the shaft and act as a counterweight against the rotor blade. The notion was that this would make for a smoother, less dizzying ride.
Here's a couple of diagrams:
The problem though was that even with the improved counter-rotating design, flying it required an exceptionally strong pilot to wrestle the aircraft into submission. Supposing you could find the right kind of manpower, the learning curve for training them was pretty steep too.
When you add in the excessive per-unit cost of these devices, the Reich decided it made more sense to invest its dwindling resources into proven effective weapons and vehicles. Even if the Wehrmacht had decided to assemble a heliborne division, the slow airspeed would've made them exceptionally easy target for the bewildered Allied troops that met them on the battlefield.
While a strap-on helicopter may not have been good enough for Hitler, I still want one. The good news for me is that they're actually on the "things I can have" horizon. Weighing in at 165 pounds, the world's smallest helicopter is the GEN-H4, invented by Japanese rotorhead Gennai Yanagisawa. The prototype has been making the rounds giving demonstration flights:
By my way of thinking, the landing gear is a bit of a cop-out when it comes to strap-on helicopters though. I guess I'll just have to wait a few more years before some other Japanese guy figures out how to make the whole thing smaller.
Really it's only a matter of time.
Paul Baumgartl started tinkering with the idea in the mid-1930s. What he originally saw as a toy for wealthy sportsmen evolved into a revolutionary transportation gimmick for the German Army. The concept was to strap a miniature helicopter onto an infantryman's back, making the German supersoldier able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The first version (Heliofly I) was built and ready for testing in 1941:
With no tail rotor or counterweight to offset the torque of the spinning rotor blades, the device amounted to little more than an autogyro glider that would slow the pilot's (aka the impending casualty's) descent to a very hard landing. Any sudden increase in throttle would've sent the pilot spinning around the shaft in the opposite direction of the rotors. In effect, Baumgartl had developed a flying, twirling, vomit sprinkler.
The improved version conceived for military use consisted of a pair of rotor blades that would rotate in opposite directions around a common vertical shaft. Each rotor was independantly powered by a small engine that would also rotate around the shaft and act as a counterweight against the rotor blade. The notion was that this would make for a smoother, less dizzying ride.
Here's a couple of diagrams:
The problem though was that even with the improved counter-rotating design, flying it required an exceptionally strong pilot to wrestle the aircraft into submission. Supposing you could find the right kind of manpower, the learning curve for training them was pretty steep too.
When you add in the excessive per-unit cost of these devices, the Reich decided it made more sense to invest its dwindling resources into proven effective weapons and vehicles. Even if the Wehrmacht had decided to assemble a heliborne division, the slow airspeed would've made them exceptionally easy target for the bewildered Allied troops that met them on the battlefield.
While a strap-on helicopter may not have been good enough for Hitler, I still want one. The good news for me is that they're actually on the "things I can have" horizon. Weighing in at 165 pounds, the world's smallest helicopter is the GEN-H4, invented by Japanese rotorhead Gennai Yanagisawa. The prototype has been making the rounds giving demonstration flights:
By my way of thinking, the landing gear is a bit of a cop-out when it comes to strap-on helicopters though. I guess I'll just have to wait a few more years before some other Japanese guy figures out how to make the whole thing smaller.
Really it's only a matter of time.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Time to Take Up a New Pastime
The other day Ana and I went to see the Disney Pixar's "Up" in 3D for the second time. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. It's a well-written, beautifully rendered film that was just as much fun the second time around.
In case you don't know, it tells the story of a grumpy old man who decides to move away by tethering thousands of balloons to his house, lifting it off it's foundations and carrying him away to a South American adventure. For most people, this would be rampant escapism followed by a return to normal life. For me (and the author of this article) it just leads to all sorts of engineering questions.
How many balloons would it take to lift a house?
What kind of support structure would be required to keep everything in the house from falling out through it's bottom?
How much would the helium cost to fill all of the balloons?
Would it be possible to custom-build the house so that it would be readily able to lift on little or no notice?
According to the article, it would take between 100,000 and 2.5 million helium balloons to lift a typical 1,800 sq.ft. house. The rest of the questions I'll probably get around to answering later. In the meantime, I'm thinking I want to spend more time playing with helium balloons. Since 2.5 million helium balloons would probably be a bit pricey (even when buying in bulk), I think I'll have to start smaller than an entire house.
You may have heard of Mr. Larry Walters. He became famous in 1982 when he lifted off from his San Pedro, CA backyard in a lawn chair buoyed up by a bunch of weather balloons meaning to go up a few hundred feet. Instead he reached an altitude of 16,000 feet before drifting across the air traffic control pattern over Long Beach Airport. Then he shot a few of the balloons with a BB gun. He began descending gently toward the ground, but didn't make it all the way. Instead, his balloons got tangled in some power lines and caused a 20 minute blackout in downtown Long Beach. I am not making this up.
It turns out that was not the first or last time that someone had tried the same sort of stunt. In 2008, a Catholic priest in Brazil took off in a chair suspended by 1,000 party balloons. He drifted out to sea and radioed for help. He had a GPS with him, but didn't know how use it. He was last heard moments before crashing into the sea, unable to give his position. His body was found offshore by the Brazilian Navy nearly three months later.
On the slightly more sane side, there's a very small group of folks worldwide who have taken up "cluster ballooning." This is a sport* which involves getting into a harness dangling from dozens of oversized latex balloons and ballasted down with water bags and then taking off and hoping you don't land in a razorblade factory or a forest fire.
Everything about this sounds cool to me, so hopefully by the end of next year I'll look like this:
Remember this so you don't get wierded out if you get a phone call from me with a hurried tone asking if it's okay for me to land on your roof if I fix any damage I might cause.
You've been warned.
*There are a wide variety of definitions for the word "sport." Here are some of the uses of it as a noun:
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
2. a particular form of this, esp. in the out of doors.
3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime.
4. jest; fun; mirth; pleasantry: What he said in sport was taken seriously.
5. mockery; ridicule; derision: They made sport of him.
6. an object of derision; laughingstock.
7. something treated lightly or tossed about like a plaything.
8. something or someone subject to the whims or vicissitudes of fate, circumstances, etc.
They all seem equally applicable, but in this case I like version 8. Everyone else can stick with version 6.
In case you don't know, it tells the story of a grumpy old man who decides to move away by tethering thousands of balloons to his house, lifting it off it's foundations and carrying him away to a South American adventure. For most people, this would be rampant escapism followed by a return to normal life. For me (and the author of this article) it just leads to all sorts of engineering questions.
How many balloons would it take to lift a house?
What kind of support structure would be required to keep everything in the house from falling out through it's bottom?
How much would the helium cost to fill all of the balloons?
Would it be possible to custom-build the house so that it would be readily able to lift on little or no notice?
According to the article, it would take between 100,000 and 2.5 million helium balloons to lift a typical 1,800 sq.ft. house. The rest of the questions I'll probably get around to answering later. In the meantime, I'm thinking I want to spend more time playing with helium balloons. Since 2.5 million helium balloons would probably be a bit pricey (even when buying in bulk), I think I'll have to start smaller than an entire house.
You may have heard of Mr. Larry Walters. He became famous in 1982 when he lifted off from his San Pedro, CA backyard in a lawn chair buoyed up by a bunch of weather balloons meaning to go up a few hundred feet. Instead he reached an altitude of 16,000 feet before drifting across the air traffic control pattern over Long Beach Airport. Then he shot a few of the balloons with a BB gun. He began descending gently toward the ground, but didn't make it all the way. Instead, his balloons got tangled in some power lines and caused a 20 minute blackout in downtown Long Beach. I am not making this up.
It turns out that was not the first or last time that someone had tried the same sort of stunt. In 2008, a Catholic priest in Brazil took off in a chair suspended by 1,000 party balloons. He drifted out to sea and radioed for help. He had a GPS with him, but didn't know how use it. He was last heard moments before crashing into the sea, unable to give his position. His body was found offshore by the Brazilian Navy nearly three months later.
On the slightly more sane side, there's a very small group of folks worldwide who have taken up "cluster ballooning." This is a sport* which involves getting into a harness dangling from dozens of oversized latex balloons and ballasted down with water bags and then taking off and hoping you don't land in a razorblade factory or a forest fire.
Everything about this sounds cool to me, so hopefully by the end of next year I'll look like this:
Remember this so you don't get wierded out if you get a phone call from me with a hurried tone asking if it's okay for me to land on your roof if I fix any damage I might cause.
You've been warned.
*There are a wide variety of definitions for the word "sport." Here are some of the uses of it as a noun:
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
2. a particular form of this, esp. in the out of doors.
3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime.
4. jest; fun; mirth; pleasantry: What he said in sport was taken seriously.
5. mockery; ridicule; derision: They made sport of him.
6. an object of derision; laughingstock.
7. something treated lightly or tossed about like a plaything.
8. something or someone subject to the whims or vicissitudes of fate, circumstances, etc.
They all seem equally applicable, but in this case I like version 8. Everyone else can stick with version 6.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
LCDR THORSSON, ARRIVING.
So here's the short version of the voyage home thus far:
It started with me leaving behind the last tent I hope to sleep in for quite a while. It was one of these ones:
I hopped on a bus in Kuwait at 1830 so we could wait for almost an hour before we started rolling. It was most of two hours to get to the Kuwait City International Airport. As we arrived, a Navy petty officer stood up on the bus, told us that we were at the terminal and wished us good luck finding our flights. I never would've guessed we'd need luck until I started looking:
Once we were there we were marshalled into a line by airport security personnel and told to wait until they were ready for us. Standing there it became clear that we were waiting mostly so the local nationals could be in line ahead of us.*
Once we were through security (or what they called security) we had another couple of hours to wait for the flight to leave. I was connecting through Frankfurt, Germany and my flight was leaving at 0055.** I was flying on Lufthansa.
If you glean nothing else from the reading of this entry, know this: I absolutely LOVE Lufthansa. Less than an hour off the ground and they started with the beverage service. I'm not sure how often they brought the cart around (or how often I went to the galley to get refills) but I'd bet that I singlehandedly accounted for one and a half of their rather large bottles of red wine and one of their small bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream. That alone may have accounted for my generally positive impressions of the airline, the food, the cleanliness of the plane, the speed of the flight, or the fact that I teared up at the end of Marley & Me. One way or another, it was a great flight.
We landed in Germany at about 0600 and I had almost four hours to kill in the terminal. It was only through an act of tremendous willpower that I managed to talk myself out of buying a Bavarian maiden costume*** for Ana.
At 0940 Germany time it was time to hop on the connecting flight (also Lufthansa) from Frankfurt to Houston Texas. Despite the fact that I'd been awake for about 30 hours at this point, I still didn't really manage to sleep on that flight. Several glasses of wine and 250 pages of novel-reading later, I got my first glimpse of the United States: a patch of nondescript farmland through a hole in the cloud cover somewhere in the midwest. I'm not sure why, but suddenly a great weight was lifted off my shoulders and I felt like I was ten feet taller.****
We landed in Houston about an hour late. The original itinerary had set me up with about 90 minutes to get through customs, re-check my bags, and get to the other end of the airport to catch my connecting flight on Continental Airlines. I realize it might be a surprise, but I missed my connection. Then, in an effort that was above and beyond the call of the line of duty for any customer service representative, they gave me a standby ticket for an overbooked flight that wouldn't leave for another five hours. Welcome home indeed.
After a bit of running around, I managed to convince a more friendly customer service agent to set me up with a flight to New Orleans instead of Gulfport, Mississippi. This meant going to a different city (and state) from where my luggage was headed, but it also meant that Ana (who was waiting patiently for me to land so she could collect me) could get me in New Orleans and then drive me on to Gulfport.
While I was waiting, I managed to buy myself the niftiest T-shirt the State of Texas (as represented by the George H.W. Bush International Airport) had to offer:
When I landed in New Orleans I rushed out to meet Ana at the gate. She absolutely loved my new shirt.*****
We drove from New Orleans straight to Gulfport, got me a room in the Transient Quarters, and the rest of the evening was none of your business.
Needless to say, we did not make it to the airport in time to recover my luggage before they shut down for the night.
*This is one of those rare moments where I've almost been the definitive ugly American. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing one of these bastards by the throat and shaking vigorously while shouting, "If it weren't for guys like me you'd be an IRAQI you dumb sonofabitch!" or, "My little sister's done more than you to protect your nation, so cut us some freakin' slack." I did not. I should get a medal.
** That's 55 minutes past midnight for my civilian readers.
***This is basically the same outfit that the "St Pauli Girl" wears in those German beer ads. The main difference being that the one I was going to buy would've been about two sizes too small. Awesome!
****I was not, in reality, ten feet taller. If I was I wouldn't've fit in my seat on the plane, silly.
*****Actually, she was embarrassed enough that she almost left me behind at the airport. Almost.
It started with me leaving behind the last tent I hope to sleep in for quite a while. It was one of these ones:
I hopped on a bus in Kuwait at 1830 so we could wait for almost an hour before we started rolling. It was most of two hours to get to the Kuwait City International Airport. As we arrived, a Navy petty officer stood up on the bus, told us that we were at the terminal and wished us good luck finding our flights. I never would've guessed we'd need luck until I started looking:
Once we were there we were marshalled into a line by airport security personnel and told to wait until they were ready for us. Standing there it became clear that we were waiting mostly so the local nationals could be in line ahead of us.*
Once we were through security (or what they called security) we had another couple of hours to wait for the flight to leave. I was connecting through Frankfurt, Germany and my flight was leaving at 0055.** I was flying on Lufthansa.
If you glean nothing else from the reading of this entry, know this: I absolutely LOVE Lufthansa. Less than an hour off the ground and they started with the beverage service. I'm not sure how often they brought the cart around (or how often I went to the galley to get refills) but I'd bet that I singlehandedly accounted for one and a half of their rather large bottles of red wine and one of their small bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream. That alone may have accounted for my generally positive impressions of the airline, the food, the cleanliness of the plane, the speed of the flight, or the fact that I teared up at the end of Marley & Me. One way or another, it was a great flight.
We landed in Germany at about 0600 and I had almost four hours to kill in the terminal. It was only through an act of tremendous willpower that I managed to talk myself out of buying a Bavarian maiden costume*** for Ana.
At 0940 Germany time it was time to hop on the connecting flight (also Lufthansa) from Frankfurt to Houston Texas. Despite the fact that I'd been awake for about 30 hours at this point, I still didn't really manage to sleep on that flight. Several glasses of wine and 250 pages of novel-reading later, I got my first glimpse of the United States: a patch of nondescript farmland through a hole in the cloud cover somewhere in the midwest. I'm not sure why, but suddenly a great weight was lifted off my shoulders and I felt like I was ten feet taller.****
We landed in Houston about an hour late. The original itinerary had set me up with about 90 minutes to get through customs, re-check my bags, and get to the other end of the airport to catch my connecting flight on Continental Airlines. I realize it might be a surprise, but I missed my connection. Then, in an effort that was above and beyond the call of the line of duty for any customer service representative, they gave me a standby ticket for an overbooked flight that wouldn't leave for another five hours. Welcome home indeed.
After a bit of running around, I managed to convince a more friendly customer service agent to set me up with a flight to New Orleans instead of Gulfport, Mississippi. This meant going to a different city (and state) from where my luggage was headed, but it also meant that Ana (who was waiting patiently for me to land so she could collect me) could get me in New Orleans and then drive me on to Gulfport.
While I was waiting, I managed to buy myself the niftiest T-shirt the State of Texas (as represented by the George H.W. Bush International Airport) had to offer:
When I landed in New Orleans I rushed out to meet Ana at the gate. She absolutely loved my new shirt.*****
We drove from New Orleans straight to Gulfport, got me a room in the Transient Quarters, and the rest of the evening was none of your business.
Needless to say, we did not make it to the airport in time to recover my luggage before they shut down for the night.
*This is one of those rare moments where I've almost been the definitive ugly American. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing one of these bastards by the throat and shaking vigorously while shouting, "If it weren't for guys like me you'd be an IRAQI you dumb sonofabitch!" or, "My little sister's done more than you to protect your nation, so cut us some freakin' slack." I did not. I should get a medal.
** That's 55 minutes past midnight for my civilian readers.
***This is basically the same outfit that the "St Pauli Girl" wears in those German beer ads. The main difference being that the one I was going to buy would've been about two sizes too small. Awesome!
****I was not, in reality, ten feet taller. If I was I wouldn't've fit in my seat on the plane, silly.
*****Actually, she was embarrassed enough that she almost left me behind at the airport. Almost.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Slowly Rolling
The last time I posted I was still waiting around at Bagram Air Field to catch my flight to Kuwait. So here's the way the timeline ended up working out:
27 April (late): I found out I was actually leaving.
28 April: While doing my last-minute checking out stuff, I found out I couldn't get back some 30lbs of laundry because it was a local holiday (Mujahideen Day) and none of the staff in the laundry were coming to work. This is also why nobody was able to tell me anything about ground transportation to Bagram Airfield or even flights from Kabul to Bagram. The mail room was open though, so I was able to lighten my load by quite a bit. I don't remember how much weight that bit was, but it was about $140 worth of postage. Late in the day I lucked out and got word of a convoy headed to Bagram that might have room for me if I was ready to go by...
29 April, 0540 (in the morning): I got to load everything I own in Afghanistan (and a bunch of Army crap I haven't even pulled out of my luggage since I arrived*) into the back of an up-armored Suburban. I ended up in a five-vehicle convoy and my vehicle had a German driver, Swedish vehicle commander, and the other guy in the backseat with me was a Danish Army lieutenant colonel. Fun.
We arrived at Bagram a couple of hours later and I convinced them to drop me off at the passenger terminal so I wouldn't have to walk while carrying three full seabags (each around 75lbs), one full rucksack (around 45lbs), my laptop case (about 25lbs), my rifle, my body armor, and my sleeping bag. Once I'd stacked it all neatly in the baggage area, I had nothing to do until the following day.
30 April, 0900: I got to muster with the good folks at the Navy's admin shop for all of Afghanistan. It was tucked away in the farthest, darkest corner of the airbase (a good 30-minute walk from anything else), so it took a bit of finding. Once there, I got the last few pieces of paper that would allow me to leave Afghanistan. Then I had nothing to do until...
01 May, 0900: Checked in with the same admin shop to find out what time my flight out would be. It turns out we were expected to muster at 2345, so I got to look forward to a third whole day of waiting around the airbase, wandering through the exchange and waiting in line to use the internet.
01 May, 1100: I happened across a Navy lieutenant who happens to be flying out with me and he tells me that the flight has been postponed by an hour and we'll be mustering at 0100 instead. Fun.
01 May, 2200: Thunder, lightning, and pouring rain start simultaneously. Ten minutes later it occurs to me that my three seabags, my body armor, and my helmet are neatly stacked in the baggage area outside the passenger terminal and probably completely soaked through. Realizing that once something is completely soaked through it can't get any wetter, I resign myself to carrying all of the original weight plus another 90lbs of water.
02 May, 0100: I show up for muster and find out the flight has been delayed even further. Then I go out and find out that some kind soul has dragged all of the stuff that was outside into a nearby tent and it takes me half an hour to find all of my gear again.
02 May, 0215: Roll call. We find out we'll be flying to Kuwait on a C-17 and that every single seat is full. An hour later it is time to load up our luggage:
There were two pallets like this one and another smaller one with all of our crap.
02 May 04??: Boarding time. We grab our carry-on items and stroll out to the plane:
Despite being thoroughly exhausted I'm still unable to sleep:
02 May, 08??: We land in some airbase in Kuwait. They told me the name, but I was kinda strung-out and I don't remember it. A 45-minute bus ride later we were deposited at a tent on the far side of the airbase. Then things got slightly stupider.
We were assigned to a tent for the day. Our bags were dropped off at one end of the tent complex at around 0930. We were told that we would have to board a bus convoy at 2200 that evening after loading our bags onto a stake truck on the opposite side of the tent compound, roughly half a mile away. Why they couldn't drop our bags off and pick us up in the same place still has me boggled, but I suppose that's just par for the course.
I ignored the baggage drop off, ambled over to my tent, sat down on one of the beds in there, and passed out. A few hours later I woke up and got in line to use the internet. A few minutes later the cafe's internet connection failed and I had nothing left to do but wait to leave.
At 2000 I found one of the Navy chief petty officers who was travelling with me and found out he'd managed to borrow a truck to move the pile of bags from one end of the tent city to the other. We mustered up five more guys and it took only two trips with the little truck and a utility trailer to get everyone's luggage over to the pickup point.
At 2200 we began waiting around for the busses to show up. At 2245 the busses arrived and we found out we would have to wait for a boatload of dudes coming in from Iraq that would be moving with us. At 2345 they were onboard and we set out for a completely different base.
03 May, 0230: We arrived at Camp Arifjan, the Army base in Kuwait where the Navy would put us through it's "Warrior Transition Program," and prep us for going back to the states. Within minutes of arrival we were assigned to the tents we would be sleeping in. Moments after that I was passed out on a bare mattress with my balled-up shirt for a pillow.
04 May, 1300: Warrior Transition Workshop. This is where a Navy chaplain sat us down and told us what to expect from our homecoming. The short version: nothing. He pointed out that our return won't involve manning the rails in dress whites and having a big crowd waiting on the pier to welcome us home. There won't be any parades or flag-waving. He also went on to point out that we need to steel ourselves to deal with a bunch of folks who have been doing all of their normal work PLUS all of the things that were our job before we left.
Fun.
Now all I have to do is wait until tomorrow when I'll board the bus to the airport. I'm flying commercial flights all the way back, so I've got to find civilian clothes to wear on the plane. I wish I'd've known that before I mailed home most of my stuff. Oops.
*The Army actually issued me an entrenching tool. For those of you who don't speak Army, an "entrenching tool" is a shovel. By my reasoning, if we ended up in a situation where they need a naval officer to use a shovel, we've already lost the war.
27 April (late): I found out I was actually leaving.
28 April: While doing my last-minute checking out stuff, I found out I couldn't get back some 30lbs of laundry because it was a local holiday (Mujahideen Day) and none of the staff in the laundry were coming to work. This is also why nobody was able to tell me anything about ground transportation to Bagram Airfield or even flights from Kabul to Bagram. The mail room was open though, so I was able to lighten my load by quite a bit. I don't remember how much weight that bit was, but it was about $140 worth of postage. Late in the day I lucked out and got word of a convoy headed to Bagram that might have room for me if I was ready to go by...
29 April, 0540 (in the morning): I got to load everything I own in Afghanistan (and a bunch of Army crap I haven't even pulled out of my luggage since I arrived*) into the back of an up-armored Suburban. I ended up in a five-vehicle convoy and my vehicle had a German driver, Swedish vehicle commander, and the other guy in the backseat with me was a Danish Army lieutenant colonel. Fun.
We arrived at Bagram a couple of hours later and I convinced them to drop me off at the passenger terminal so I wouldn't have to walk while carrying three full seabags (each around 75lbs), one full rucksack (around 45lbs), my laptop case (about 25lbs), my rifle, my body armor, and my sleeping bag. Once I'd stacked it all neatly in the baggage area, I had nothing to do until the following day.
30 April, 0900: I got to muster with the good folks at the Navy's admin shop for all of Afghanistan. It was tucked away in the farthest, darkest corner of the airbase (a good 30-minute walk from anything else), so it took a bit of finding. Once there, I got the last few pieces of paper that would allow me to leave Afghanistan. Then I had nothing to do until...
01 May, 0900: Checked in with the same admin shop to find out what time my flight out would be. It turns out we were expected to muster at 2345, so I got to look forward to a third whole day of waiting around the airbase, wandering through the exchange and waiting in line to use the internet.
01 May, 1100: I happened across a Navy lieutenant who happens to be flying out with me and he tells me that the flight has been postponed by an hour and we'll be mustering at 0100 instead. Fun.
01 May, 2200: Thunder, lightning, and pouring rain start simultaneously. Ten minutes later it occurs to me that my three seabags, my body armor, and my helmet are neatly stacked in the baggage area outside the passenger terminal and probably completely soaked through. Realizing that once something is completely soaked through it can't get any wetter, I resign myself to carrying all of the original weight plus another 90lbs of water.
02 May, 0100: I show up for muster and find out the flight has been delayed even further. Then I go out and find out that some kind soul has dragged all of the stuff that was outside into a nearby tent and it takes me half an hour to find all of my gear again.
02 May, 0215: Roll call. We find out we'll be flying to Kuwait on a C-17 and that every single seat is full. An hour later it is time to load up our luggage:
There were two pallets like this one and another smaller one with all of our crap.
02 May 04??: Boarding time. We grab our carry-on items and stroll out to the plane:
Despite being thoroughly exhausted I'm still unable to sleep:
02 May, 08??: We land in some airbase in Kuwait. They told me the name, but I was kinda strung-out and I don't remember it. A 45-minute bus ride later we were deposited at a tent on the far side of the airbase. Then things got slightly stupider.
We were assigned to a tent for the day. Our bags were dropped off at one end of the tent complex at around 0930. We were told that we would have to board a bus convoy at 2200 that evening after loading our bags onto a stake truck on the opposite side of the tent compound, roughly half a mile away. Why they couldn't drop our bags off and pick us up in the same place still has me boggled, but I suppose that's just par for the course.
I ignored the baggage drop off, ambled over to my tent, sat down on one of the beds in there, and passed out. A few hours later I woke up and got in line to use the internet. A few minutes later the cafe's internet connection failed and I had nothing left to do but wait to leave.
At 2000 I found one of the Navy chief petty officers who was travelling with me and found out he'd managed to borrow a truck to move the pile of bags from one end of the tent city to the other. We mustered up five more guys and it took only two trips with the little truck and a utility trailer to get everyone's luggage over to the pickup point.
At 2200 we began waiting around for the busses to show up. At 2245 the busses arrived and we found out we would have to wait for a boatload of dudes coming in from Iraq that would be moving with us. At 2345 they were onboard and we set out for a completely different base.
03 May, 0230: We arrived at Camp Arifjan, the Army base in Kuwait where the Navy would put us through it's "Warrior Transition Program," and prep us for going back to the states. Within minutes of arrival we were assigned to the tents we would be sleeping in. Moments after that I was passed out on a bare mattress with my balled-up shirt for a pillow.
03 May, 1150: Gear turn-in. I got to unload my M16A2 assault rifle, M9 pistol, gas mask, MOPP suit, entrenching tool, cold-weather gear, body armor, helmet, and oodles and gobs of other random camping gear that the Army wanted back. It was easily the best moment of the year so far.
Once our stuff was unloaded, the rest of the day was ours to spend as we saw fit. I saw fit to spend it lying in my rack and reading.04 May, 1300: Warrior Transition Workshop. This is where a Navy chaplain sat us down and told us what to expect from our homecoming. The short version: nothing. He pointed out that our return won't involve manning the rails in dress whites and having a big crowd waiting on the pier to welcome us home. There won't be any parades or flag-waving. He also went on to point out that we need to steel ourselves to deal with a bunch of folks who have been doing all of their normal work PLUS all of the things that were our job before we left.
Fun.
Now all I have to do is wait until tomorrow when I'll board the bus to the airport. I'm flying commercial flights all the way back, so I've got to find civilian clothes to wear on the plane. I wish I'd've known that before I mailed home most of my stuff. Oops.
*The Army actually issued me an entrenching tool. For those of you who don't speak Army, an "entrenching tool" is a shovel. By my reasoning, if we ended up in a situation where they need a naval officer to use a shovel, we've already lost the war.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
An Amazingly Wasted Day
The plan was simple. Go to the airport, catch a ride on a USAID* plane headed to Bamian Province, get to know the New Zealand-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (NZPRT) there, then find your way back. I've been looking forward to visiting Bamian ever since I've been here.
If Afghanistan ever manages to build a tourist industry, it will be focused in Bamian Province. This is where the world-famous Buddha statues were carved into the cliff faces (the largest known examples of such statues anywhere) used to be before the Taliban decided they were idolatrous and destroyed them in March 2001. This is also where the Band-e Amir lakes, a group of amazingly clear, azure bodies of water, are located. The area is so safe that instead of the armed and armored vehicles that are used in other provinces, it's common for the NZPRT soldiers stationed here to travel by horseback.
In order to minimize our impact on their operations, we decided to keep our footprint as small as possible. This meant that the entire visiting team from the headquarters would be myself and LCDR "Vic" Vale, armed with pistols, rifles, paper, and pens. Since travelling in Afghanistan is a sketchy proposition at best, we were loaded with everything we might need in case our three-day tour turned into a week worth of waiting for flights to get sorted out.
Vic and I met up in the office at, oh, seven hundred or so to grab all of our gear, check email one last time, don our armor and set out. At some classified time in the morning we met up with a British convoy to travel from the headquarters to the USAID terminal at the western end of the Kabul Area International Airport. The Brits were very serious and drove aggressively enough that we got there with plenty of time to spare before the flight to Bamian was supposed to take off.
Once we arrived at the terminal the booking agent, a local Afghan employee, told us that our flight had been cancelled due to the weather. While it was overcast, there were still plenty of aircraft taking off from the airport, so I don't understand why these guys weren't willing to fly. All the same, the agent said he'd put us on the afternoon flight to Mazar-e-Sharif (which I'd like to point out is not Bamian) if we'd be willing to wait around. It was the wrong place, but it was in the right direction, and the agent suggested that we'd have better luck trying to travel from MeS to Bamian.
We dumped our gear in the passenger terminal, a 40-foot shipping container with a broken down heater, a water cooler, and a handful of wicker chairs, and set about waiting. After five hours one of the guys from the flight line came in and was surprised to see us there.
"You guys are still waiting here?"
"Is there somewhere else to wait?"
"Not really," says he, "but all of our flights for today are cancelled, so there's no reason to keep waiting."
He went on to explain that there were no scheduled flights we could use the next day and that all of the flights for the day after were booked solid. With no chance to make any kind of progress toward our destination, there was no sense in staying at the terminal.
This presents a problem. At this point we're sitting in a passenger terminal that nobody from the headquarters compound has any reason to visit. We're not allowed to schedule convoy movements using a telephone in case someone is listening in on our conversation. So there we were on the wrong side of the airport on the wrong side of town with all the crap we could carry on our backs and stranded.
The solution was the ISAF military airfield on the other end of the runway. There was a small chance that we could catch a flight to somewhere in our intended direction, but failing that there's always someone coming and going between the airfield and the headquarters. Since the USAID folks didn't have a driver to spare so we could hitch a ride and Kabul isn't the sort of place you want to go walking around dressed as an American soldier in one-sies and two-sies, the only way to get there was to walk the length of the runway.
When I asked the USAID booking agent if we'd be allowed to walk along the runway, his answer didn't exactly inspire confidence:
"You'll probably be fine."
Nice.
It was a long walk, and about halfway along we strolled past a couple of airliners mated up to the civilian passenger terminal. It's not the sort of view I'm really used to at an airport (normally I'm on the other side of this scene) but otherwise there was nothing remarkable about it. As we ambled by, an Afghan policeman came out of the building on our right and started yelling at us. We managed to ignore him long enough to get past and eventually found our way into the back gate at Camp KAIA, the military airfield.
We arrived at the military passenger terminal and found out there were no flights left for the day that we could use to get where we were headed. We also learned that we arrived just five minutes after the shuttle convoy departed for the headquarters. Since it was clear we weren't going anywhere soon, we ditched our gear, grabbed lunch, and did a little shopping.
As we were walking from the post exchange back toward the passenger terminal, I spotted a US Army major that I'd seen around at the HQ as she was about to climb into her vehicle and bummed a ride. Our little adventure ended early in the afternoon and we'd managed to accomplish little more than pissing off an airport cop, but now at least we're better prepared for our next attempt at the same trip.
Stay tuned and sooner or later I should actually have something interesting to write about. That, and pictures of some big holes where there used to be big buddha statues. In the meantime, we'll consider this attempt a dress rehearsal.
*USAID is the United States Agency for International Development. They have planes. We're allowed to travel in them when they're going our way.
If Afghanistan ever manages to build a tourist industry, it will be focused in Bamian Province. This is where the world-famous Buddha statues were carved into the cliff faces (the largest known examples of such statues anywhere) used to be before the Taliban decided they were idolatrous and destroyed them in March 2001. This is also where the Band-e Amir lakes, a group of amazingly clear, azure bodies of water, are located. The area is so safe that instead of the armed and armored vehicles that are used in other provinces, it's common for the NZPRT soldiers stationed here to travel by horseback.
In order to minimize our impact on their operations, we decided to keep our footprint as small as possible. This meant that the entire visiting team from the headquarters would be myself and LCDR "Vic" Vale, armed with pistols, rifles, paper, and pens. Since travelling in Afghanistan is a sketchy proposition at best, we were loaded with everything we might need in case our three-day tour turned into a week worth of waiting for flights to get sorted out.
Vic and I met up in the office at, oh, seven hundred or so to grab all of our gear, check email one last time, don our armor and set out. At some classified time in the morning we met up with a British convoy to travel from the headquarters to the USAID terminal at the western end of the Kabul Area International Airport. The Brits were very serious and drove aggressively enough that we got there with plenty of time to spare before the flight to Bamian was supposed to take off.
Once we arrived at the terminal the booking agent, a local Afghan employee, told us that our flight had been cancelled due to the weather. While it was overcast, there were still plenty of aircraft taking off from the airport, so I don't understand why these guys weren't willing to fly. All the same, the agent said he'd put us on the afternoon flight to Mazar-e-Sharif (which I'd like to point out is not Bamian) if we'd be willing to wait around. It was the wrong place, but it was in the right direction, and the agent suggested that we'd have better luck trying to travel from MeS to Bamian.
We dumped our gear in the passenger terminal, a 40-foot shipping container with a broken down heater, a water cooler, and a handful of wicker chairs, and set about waiting. After five hours one of the guys from the flight line came in and was surprised to see us there.
"You guys are still waiting here?"
"Is there somewhere else to wait?"
"Not really," says he, "but all of our flights for today are cancelled, so there's no reason to keep waiting."
He went on to explain that there were no scheduled flights we could use the next day and that all of the flights for the day after were booked solid. With no chance to make any kind of progress toward our destination, there was no sense in staying at the terminal.
This presents a problem. At this point we're sitting in a passenger terminal that nobody from the headquarters compound has any reason to visit. We're not allowed to schedule convoy movements using a telephone in case someone is listening in on our conversation. So there we were on the wrong side of the airport on the wrong side of town with all the crap we could carry on our backs and stranded.
The solution was the ISAF military airfield on the other end of the runway. There was a small chance that we could catch a flight to somewhere in our intended direction, but failing that there's always someone coming and going between the airfield and the headquarters. Since the USAID folks didn't have a driver to spare so we could hitch a ride and Kabul isn't the sort of place you want to go walking around dressed as an American soldier in one-sies and two-sies, the only way to get there was to walk the length of the runway.
When I asked the USAID booking agent if we'd be allowed to walk along the runway, his answer didn't exactly inspire confidence:
"You'll probably be fine."
Nice.
It was a long walk, and about halfway along we strolled past a couple of airliners mated up to the civilian passenger terminal. It's not the sort of view I'm really used to at an airport (normally I'm on the other side of this scene) but otherwise there was nothing remarkable about it. As we ambled by, an Afghan policeman came out of the building on our right and started yelling at us. We managed to ignore him long enough to get past and eventually found our way into the back gate at Camp KAIA, the military airfield.
We arrived at the military passenger terminal and found out there were no flights left for the day that we could use to get where we were headed. We also learned that we arrived just five minutes after the shuttle convoy departed for the headquarters. Since it was clear we weren't going anywhere soon, we ditched our gear, grabbed lunch, and did a little shopping.
As we were walking from the post exchange back toward the passenger terminal, I spotted a US Army major that I'd seen around at the HQ as she was about to climb into her vehicle and bummed a ride. Our little adventure ended early in the afternoon and we'd managed to accomplish little more than pissing off an airport cop, but now at least we're better prepared for our next attempt at the same trip.
Stay tuned and sooner or later I should actually have something interesting to write about. That, and pictures of some big holes where there used to be big buddha statues. In the meantime, we'll consider this attempt a dress rehearsal.
*USAID is the United States Agency for International Development. They have planes. We're allowed to travel in them when they're going our way.
Friday, November 7, 2008
A Letter I Once Wrote to US Airways
Dear US Airways:
I would like to start by saying that my luggage arrived complete and intact. Thank you.
I am a veteran airline passenger. I fly often. This year alone I have been to fifteen states and four countries. I realize that as soon as I check my luggage I am also effectively checking my human worth and dignity. I also realize that in exchange for rapidly transiting the nation from coast to coast I must pay hundreds of dollars and suffer several hours of being treated like cattle. I enter any airline travel situation in a Zen state, ready to accept all hardships, secure in the knowledge that hundreds of professionals are doing all they can to get me safely to my destination. I remain seated throughout the flight with my seatbelt fastened and faithfully follow the instructions of the captain and crew. I think I'm an exceptionally easy customer to deal with.
Wednesday the 11th of October I was on flight 1535S from Providence, Rhode Island to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania departing at 3:40 p.m. From Philadelphia I was continuing on to San Francisco. In accordance with airline suggestions I arrived over two hours early. We boarded on time and left the gate on time. At this point everything seemed like it was going to go smoothly. Little did I know I had just embarked on the most trying travel experience of my life.
Things began going wrong when it started to rain in Philadelphia. At first this didn't strike me as a problem, it rains all the time and planes still fly and land in it. When the announcement came that we were going to be delayed leaving Providence, I started to get the idea that things weren’t going to go so smoothly.
The flight from Providence to Philadelphia left Providence over three hours late. At one point we even taxied back to the terminal to on load all of the passengers from the next flight to Philadelphia. There was a brief glimmer of hope when I realized that a lot of other flights into Philadelphia were probably delayed and with a sprinkling of luck I might just maybe be able to catch a connection to San Francisco. I'm not usually so naïve, but I was trying to remain optimistic.
We arrived in Philadelphia quickly but we were still over three hours late. Per the captain’s instructions, I went straight to the gate agent to ask about connecting flights. I was supposed to be connecting via flight 189Y to San Francisco. This flight was booked through US Airways, the ticket read US Airways, but for reasons unclear to me I was apparently flying on United Airlines. I realize that this was a bad time to expect help from the gate agent, but she sent me to a different concourse to ask United about getting on a flight that had clearly left hours earlier. Still, following directions in the foolish hope that the airline employees had a better idea of what was going on than me, I went to the other concourse.
United Airlines’ representatives spent several confused minutes wondering why I was there before they sent me back to US Airways. US Airways sent me to their customer service desk. This was about twenty feet from the gate where I left my flight from Providence. With all of the running around, it took me forty-five minutes to get there. In that time, the line had grown from four customers to almost sixty. There was one solitary customer service agent there to help us all. No attempt was made to triage the more pressing connection issues and so we all had to stand in line holding our carry-on items.
I stood in this line for two hours before I was finally helped. After the first hour, the airline managed to muster three additional agents to help customers. While I realize that I don’t understand the complexities of these people’s jobs, it seems to me that the person who helped me must have been a janitor who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Said janitor was unable to find my name on my ticket, typed about two words per minute, and had to ask the other agents for help six separate times before he could print me a new ticket. I’d have been irritated if I didn’t feel so bad for him. There were still at least fifty more angry people in line behind me.
The new ticket the janitor gave me was for a US Airways flight bound from Philadelphia to San Francisco at 9:30 a.m. on the 12th. At this point, local time was about 8:45p.m. on the 11th. This meant that I was left in a strange city in a strange airport with no provision for lodging, meals, or security. The janitor actually had the audacity to tell me that I was welcome to sleep in the terminal! When I asked him where I could find something to eat, he mentioned that there might be one restaurant open in the airport, but he didn’t know which one or where it was.
So I spent the next almost thirteen hours trying to entertain myself by wandering around and looking at all of the closed shops in this ghost town of an international airport. Fortunately, a coffee shop opened in the terminal at 5:00 a.m. These good people were able to sell me a cup of coffee and a frozen bagel (some places need to be told to toast a bagel, these folks needed to be told to thaw it) for the bargain price of about eight dollars.
After sitting on my bagel long enough to soften the ice crystals and saw it in half, it was time to go and sit at my gate for another three and a half hours. Boarding began on time at 9:00 a.m. This is when I was introduced to the single most offensively rude flight attendant I have ever encountered. In my state of mental exhaustion, I didn’t catch her name. I wish I had. I also wish I had kept the bagel long enough to bludgeon her with it.
While we were waiting to leave, an elderly Asian couple boarded the plane who obviously had no understanding of the English language. They were unable to find their seats. This flight attendant’s solution was to yell at them. Rather than read their tickets and direct them to their seats, she just started looking for empty seats to put them in. Bear in mind that at this point people were still boarding the plane. At one point, just after seating this elderly couple, another passenger mentioned to this flight attendant, “Excuse me, ma’am, but I think that’s my seat.” This woman wheeled on her and snapped, “Honey, I’ll deal with you in a second!” Even from three rows back I could feel he heat of her scathing reprimand. Throughout the entire flight, she met every new question or problem with the courtesy and compassion of a Marine drill instructor.
This same stewardess also managed to dump a bunch of ice on my lap during the beverage service. Despite the fact that I am a rather small person and was well within the confines of my seat, somehow she still managed scowl at me as if it was my fault. Still, my favorite part of her customer service acumen was the part where she managed to knock her elbow into the back of my head twice while walking down the aisle. I paid attention and I was not the only person who received this treatment. I couldn’t help but get the idea that my very presence on her plane was something that required her to retaliate. All of this I endured without confrontation or complaint.
Shortly after departing Philadelphia, the pilot informed us that we were going to be stopping in Kansas City to refuel. These are planes that can fly from Texas to Tokyo without refueling, so I fail to understand why we couldn’t fly non-stop from Philadelphia to San Francisco. I know I’ve done it before. Apparently someone didn’t do all of the math before we left. This did little to instill confidence in the abilities of those involved in the maintenance and deployment of the aircraft.
In my row of seats, none of the headset jacks were working. At first I didn’t need any of the in-flight entertainment because I was fully intending to sleep through the flight. This was made impossible by the man seated to my left and the small child two rows ahead of me. They were both noisy enough that I desperately needed any kind of rhythmic sound distraction. Instead of music or the movie soundtrack, I was forced to listen to a man snoring with a volume that probably disrupted the migratory patterns of certain Canadian birds. This was interrupted only by the regular, periodic screaming of a rather androgynous ten-year-old child.
This child had to wail and cry every time it noticed something new. It’s particular version of crying was of a uniquely piercing tone that seemed to waver in and out of the high frequency threshold of human hearing perception. Dogs in the Midwest are likely still suffering long-term effects of our passage. When I mention this child, I use the term "it" because it was dressed and groomed in a manner that made gender determination impossible even after seven hours of glaring at it. I usually do pretty well with annoying people on planes, but I met this little hermaphrodite after being awake for 27 hours. Needless to say, I didn’t manage to sleep on the flight. This kid could’ve used a bagel bludgeoning too.
I arrived in San Francisco roughly sixteen hours late, famished, and thoroughly exhausted. Because I arrived in the early afternoon instead of early evening, I had to take a bus home at some expense since everyone I know in the San Francisco Bay Area was working.
Fortunately, my luggage arrived complete and intact. Thank you.
Apart from that, your airline seems to have kindly included every conceivable air travel problem into my itinerary. This whole trip seemed to be an exploratory voyage through the entire range of things that can go wrong on planes. In fact, the only things that were missing were lost luggage and a mid-air collision. Before you try to set me up with either of them, rest assured that I’m happy to have missed out on those particular inconveniences.
In the end what should’ve been a quick nine hours worth of relaxed air travel turned into a miserable twenty-five hour ordeal. I’m not sure if there’s anything you can do to fix these problems. Mostly I just wanted to let you know what you’ve done to me. Perhaps it goes without saying that I’ll hesitate to recommend your airline to my fellow travelers.
Thank you for taking the time to address my concerns.
Sincerely,
Shawn M. Thorsson
Frustrated Frequent Flyer
I would like to start by saying that my luggage arrived complete and intact. Thank you.
I am a veteran airline passenger. I fly often. This year alone I have been to fifteen states and four countries. I realize that as soon as I check my luggage I am also effectively checking my human worth and dignity. I also realize that in exchange for rapidly transiting the nation from coast to coast I must pay hundreds of dollars and suffer several hours of being treated like cattle. I enter any airline travel situation in a Zen state, ready to accept all hardships, secure in the knowledge that hundreds of professionals are doing all they can to get me safely to my destination. I remain seated throughout the flight with my seatbelt fastened and faithfully follow the instructions of the captain and crew. I think I'm an exceptionally easy customer to deal with.
Wednesday the 11th of October I was on flight 1535S from Providence, Rhode Island to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania departing at 3:40 p.m. From Philadelphia I was continuing on to San Francisco. In accordance with airline suggestions I arrived over two hours early. We boarded on time and left the gate on time. At this point everything seemed like it was going to go smoothly. Little did I know I had just embarked on the most trying travel experience of my life.
Things began going wrong when it started to rain in Philadelphia. At first this didn't strike me as a problem, it rains all the time and planes still fly and land in it. When the announcement came that we were going to be delayed leaving Providence, I started to get the idea that things weren’t going to go so smoothly.
The flight from Providence to Philadelphia left Providence over three hours late. At one point we even taxied back to the terminal to on load all of the passengers from the next flight to Philadelphia. There was a brief glimmer of hope when I realized that a lot of other flights into Philadelphia were probably delayed and with a sprinkling of luck I might just maybe be able to catch a connection to San Francisco. I'm not usually so naïve, but I was trying to remain optimistic.
We arrived in Philadelphia quickly but we were still over three hours late. Per the captain’s instructions, I went straight to the gate agent to ask about connecting flights. I was supposed to be connecting via flight 189Y to San Francisco. This flight was booked through US Airways, the ticket read US Airways, but for reasons unclear to me I was apparently flying on United Airlines. I realize that this was a bad time to expect help from the gate agent, but she sent me to a different concourse to ask United about getting on a flight that had clearly left hours earlier. Still, following directions in the foolish hope that the airline employees had a better idea of what was going on than me, I went to the other concourse.
United Airlines’ representatives spent several confused minutes wondering why I was there before they sent me back to US Airways. US Airways sent me to their customer service desk. This was about twenty feet from the gate where I left my flight from Providence. With all of the running around, it took me forty-five minutes to get there. In that time, the line had grown from four customers to almost sixty. There was one solitary customer service agent there to help us all. No attempt was made to triage the more pressing connection issues and so we all had to stand in line holding our carry-on items.
I stood in this line for two hours before I was finally helped. After the first hour, the airline managed to muster three additional agents to help customers. While I realize that I don’t understand the complexities of these people’s jobs, it seems to me that the person who helped me must have been a janitor who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Said janitor was unable to find my name on my ticket, typed about two words per minute, and had to ask the other agents for help six separate times before he could print me a new ticket. I’d have been irritated if I didn’t feel so bad for him. There were still at least fifty more angry people in line behind me.
The new ticket the janitor gave me was for a US Airways flight bound from Philadelphia to San Francisco at 9:30 a.m. on the 12th. At this point, local time was about 8:45p.m. on the 11th. This meant that I was left in a strange city in a strange airport with no provision for lodging, meals, or security. The janitor actually had the audacity to tell me that I was welcome to sleep in the terminal! When I asked him where I could find something to eat, he mentioned that there might be one restaurant open in the airport, but he didn’t know which one or where it was.
So I spent the next almost thirteen hours trying to entertain myself by wandering around and looking at all of the closed shops in this ghost town of an international airport. Fortunately, a coffee shop opened in the terminal at 5:00 a.m. These good people were able to sell me a cup of coffee and a frozen bagel (some places need to be told to toast a bagel, these folks needed to be told to thaw it) for the bargain price of about eight dollars.
After sitting on my bagel long enough to soften the ice crystals and saw it in half, it was time to go and sit at my gate for another three and a half hours. Boarding began on time at 9:00 a.m. This is when I was introduced to the single most offensively rude flight attendant I have ever encountered. In my state of mental exhaustion, I didn’t catch her name. I wish I had. I also wish I had kept the bagel long enough to bludgeon her with it.
While we were waiting to leave, an elderly Asian couple boarded the plane who obviously had no understanding of the English language. They were unable to find their seats. This flight attendant’s solution was to yell at them. Rather than read their tickets and direct them to their seats, she just started looking for empty seats to put them in. Bear in mind that at this point people were still boarding the plane. At one point, just after seating this elderly couple, another passenger mentioned to this flight attendant, “Excuse me, ma’am, but I think that’s my seat.” This woman wheeled on her and snapped, “Honey, I’ll deal with you in a second!” Even from three rows back I could feel he heat of her scathing reprimand. Throughout the entire flight, she met every new question or problem with the courtesy and compassion of a Marine drill instructor.
This same stewardess also managed to dump a bunch of ice on my lap during the beverage service. Despite the fact that I am a rather small person and was well within the confines of my seat, somehow she still managed scowl at me as if it was my fault. Still, my favorite part of her customer service acumen was the part where she managed to knock her elbow into the back of my head twice while walking down the aisle. I paid attention and I was not the only person who received this treatment. I couldn’t help but get the idea that my very presence on her plane was something that required her to retaliate. All of this I endured without confrontation or complaint.
Shortly after departing Philadelphia, the pilot informed us that we were going to be stopping in Kansas City to refuel. These are planes that can fly from Texas to Tokyo without refueling, so I fail to understand why we couldn’t fly non-stop from Philadelphia to San Francisco. I know I’ve done it before. Apparently someone didn’t do all of the math before we left. This did little to instill confidence in the abilities of those involved in the maintenance and deployment of the aircraft.
In my row of seats, none of the headset jacks were working. At first I didn’t need any of the in-flight entertainment because I was fully intending to sleep through the flight. This was made impossible by the man seated to my left and the small child two rows ahead of me. They were both noisy enough that I desperately needed any kind of rhythmic sound distraction. Instead of music or the movie soundtrack, I was forced to listen to a man snoring with a volume that probably disrupted the migratory patterns of certain Canadian birds. This was interrupted only by the regular, periodic screaming of a rather androgynous ten-year-old child.
This child had to wail and cry every time it noticed something new. It’s particular version of crying was of a uniquely piercing tone that seemed to waver in and out of the high frequency threshold of human hearing perception. Dogs in the Midwest are likely still suffering long-term effects of our passage. When I mention this child, I use the term "it" because it was dressed and groomed in a manner that made gender determination impossible even after seven hours of glaring at it. I usually do pretty well with annoying people on planes, but I met this little hermaphrodite after being awake for 27 hours. Needless to say, I didn’t manage to sleep on the flight. This kid could’ve used a bagel bludgeoning too.
I arrived in San Francisco roughly sixteen hours late, famished, and thoroughly exhausted. Because I arrived in the early afternoon instead of early evening, I had to take a bus home at some expense since everyone I know in the San Francisco Bay Area was working.
Fortunately, my luggage arrived complete and intact. Thank you.
Apart from that, your airline seems to have kindly included every conceivable air travel problem into my itinerary. This whole trip seemed to be an exploratory voyage through the entire range of things that can go wrong on planes. In fact, the only things that were missing were lost luggage and a mid-air collision. Before you try to set me up with either of them, rest assured that I’m happy to have missed out on those particular inconveniences.
In the end what should’ve been a quick nine hours worth of relaxed air travel turned into a miserable twenty-five hour ordeal. I’m not sure if there’s anything you can do to fix these problems. Mostly I just wanted to let you know what you’ve done to me. Perhaps it goes without saying that I’ll hesitate to recommend your airline to my fellow travelers.
Thank you for taking the time to address my concerns.
Sincerely,
Shawn M. Thorsson
Frustrated Frequent Flyer
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