Flying High Again….

This is why I don’t like to fly. I know in theory that it’s safer than being in a car but take my manager that was in a car wreck two weeks ago. She was hit head-on by what they think might have been a drunk driver. The toxicology tests haven’t come back yet, so it’s entirely possible that he wasn’t drunk. Anyway, it completely destroyed both vehicles. He’s in a neck brace and may lose a leg. She had a compound fracture of one leg and broke the other in eight places, busted up her pelvis and punctured her spleen. She had at least two surgeries that I know of. It will be twelve weeks before she can even put any pressure on her leg and start some kind of physical therapy, probably the end of the summer before she could even consider working again, and even that will most likely only be for short periods of time. Her three kids were in the car as well but they are OK. She was very lucky.

Two planes hit head-on, there ain’t no OK, jack. You’re screwed. At least if I am in a car accident I am a bit closer to the ground.

American Airlines flight 862 was heading from West Palm Beach to Chicago and was diverted to Miami with nose gear trouble. They were lucky it was caught so early in the flight.

The flight back to Atlanta from Nassau on this past Sunday was really ugly.

The plane arrived in Nassau early on Sunday and the crew had it ready to go 25 minutes before scheduled departure. We were getting ready to take off when they figured out that someone with Delta had filed the wrong paperwork with customs and listed the crew and pilot completely wrong. They had to re-file the corrected paperwork with customs, so we left late after sitting there for 40 minutes. What sucked about it is that although all over the Bahamas you can smoke in places it’s not welcome in the U.S., there is no place in the Nassau airport to smoke. I have cut down, but sitting in the airport for two hours prior to the flight without nicotine had me somewhat jumpy.

The flight to Atlanta was pretty uneventful, almost peaceful. It was really cool (both flights) watching the coastline recede into the distance. If not for nasty weather I could probably get used to flying.

Anyway, Atlanta had some really ugly weather Sunday afternoon. Tornadoes in East Point, which is somewhat near the airport. Wind gusts of 25 mph, heavy thunder storms, that kind of stuff. We had made up quite a bit of time, but had we made it 40 minutes early like we would have if Delta hadn’t screwed up our paperwork we would have missed the storms and probably landed. As it is, they had a bunch of planes circling Atlanta.

We circled and circled for an hour or so and then the pilot came on to let us know we didn’t have enough gas to keep circling (this made me feel great) and we were being diverted to Augusta. It’s less than a thirty minute flight, so we got there safely and landed. Only problem is, they wouldn’t let us off the plane since we were an international flight. Forget the fact that we had already cleared TSA and customs prior to leaving Nassau and when we got to Atlanta we could get in the car to leave. For whatever fucking reasons you can’t get off the plane in an unscheduled landing. Either that or they don’t let international flights into Augusta normally. It was a pretty tiny airport. There were 10 other flights that had been diverted to Augusta as well.

We sat there until eight or so, finally got fueled up and returned to Atlanta in the flight that seemed to last forever. It was closer to an hour returning because the were going up and down and around the individual storm cells. Hell, until the captain announced what he was doing I thought we were in the worst of it. White knuckle stuff there for this big chicken.

Obviously we made it back OK. It’s not Delta’s fault that the storms were around Atlanta but it certainly is there fault that they filed the wrong paperwork in the Bahamas, so I am pretty pissed off at Delta for turning my two hour flight into one that lasted seven and a half hours. What did Delta have to say? Thanks for flying and hope you fly with us again.

bwahahaha.

You know what the sad thing is?

I probably will.

fuck.