Our Trips: Massachusetts. May 21-25, 2022.

Joe and Jess wanted to spend a couple of days in the Berkshires, and we are glad to fly up to babysit the grandchildren. Taking care of the kids also might be a good way to force us to adjust to jetlag anyway.

So. a routine trip. Except that the trip up to Boston was quite eventful in that we were delayed by over 5 hours. And that's the reason for this blog: to record (hopefully) one of my worst flight experiences.

The plane was a bit late getting out of the gate, which was not unusual for that time of day (6 pm). It was one of these "freak" weather days when the temperature soared to the 90s, with no let up in the late afternoon. The plane sat (where-ever it was) for a while before the captain came on to explain there is an issue that had to be addressed.

Again, that is quite routine. However, airport operations was so messed up that they couldn't find a gate to pull up to. So we sat there for another while. After over an hour (didn't check my watch, but at least that much, felt a lot longer than that) we finally found a gate, in the area usually reserved for flights to Israel. In any case, we dutifully deplaned and waited for the issue to be fixed.

Eventually they said a different plane would be used, and we were told to move to another gate. The security people at (around) Gate 138 said they would have cleared us out to secure the area for the Israel flight anyway.

Then came another problem. The original cockpit crew had exceeded their duty hours and were relieved, but there was no crew to take its place. For a while the gate agent didn't know where the crew would be from; eventually she said they were coming in from St. Thomas and that plane wouldn't get in until after 11 pm. We all applauded when the pilots showed up.

The crew (seemed to have) said, it's a routine, forty minute flight, we will get you there and come right back, no problem! Problem: the queue to take off was still quite substantial, so we didn't get into Boston until about 1 am. The plane left the gate at around 11:30 pm, so the wait was around 50 minutes!

Surprisingly there was little complaint from the passengers. I guess we are all conditioned to act in a docile manner.

When we landed, there were people waiting at the BOS terminal. They were supposed to be on an 8:30 pm flight, using the plane we came in on. That flight was delayed until 1:30 am (I am sure they didn't turn around in 30 minutes.)

This reminds me of our 2017 trip to Nashville.

While cooped up inside a hot plane on the tarmac, I wrote the 1K people, with the expectation that they could do something about getting me on the next flight. It turned out they "had to look into it," and it wouldn't have helped anyway as everything got delayed. A couple of days later, they wrote me and said we (including Anne) would get some miles as compensation.

Our return trip to Newark was uneventful, and we got to eat at Stephanie's courtesy Priority Pass. However, the level of service seemed to have gone downhill, a lot.

I am typing this on June 7 at the Polaris lounge, flying out on the 10 pm flight to London, which got delayed to 11:05 pm. Again something wrong with the plane, and the "new" plane won't get in until 10 pm. I will write about this in the next blog entry.

Posting this now, will add some screen shots later.