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Friday, January 7, 2011

Why did I expect anything different this time?

As usual, my thought process was hoping for an uneventful trip to Bangor this weekend.  But, like always, our first day out had it's problems.

Have you noticed that whenever we go on a trip or excursion or some place that we have to travel too something always goes wrong the first day?  If not, check out the earlier posts of this blog and you will see what I mean.

Anyway, it happened again.  We left Phoenix on Thursday to fly to Bangor, Maine via Detroit.  We left PHX airport about 20 minutes late (no problem) and the pilot made up good time and got us into Detroit only 3 minutes later than the original arrival time.  But instead of the original 45 minute lay-over we had 25 minutes and we had to go from gate A78 to gate C31.  So hot-footing we go.  I walk faster than Karl because of his hip so I moved out in front of him and got to the gate 1 minute before the gate closed.  Made it!  Karl caught up a few minutes later.  We get into the aircraft, stow our luggage, get settled in our seats and wait for the push off from the gate.  We wait and we wait and we wait and we wait some more.  Finally the pilot comes over the PA system, "Ladies and gentlemen - we have a slight problem that the mechanics are going to look at - it should be only a few minutes.  We will let you know about our departure time in a few minutes."  So we wait and we wait and we wait some more.  15 minutes later the pilot is on the PA again, "Ladies and gentlemen - the mechanics has found a slight problem with our braking system, but they are working on it now and it should only be a couple of minutes more."  So we wait and we wait and we wait some more.  15 minutes later, the pilot again, "Ladies and gentlemen - uh, it looks like they found the problem and have fixed it but we are checking the lines to see if they will hold pressure.  It should only be a few more minutes."  So we wait and we wait and we wait some more.  By this time we are 30 minutes late in departure.  30 minutes later, the pilot again, "Ladies and gentlemen - the mechanics need to contact the supervisor to see what we are going to do with this aircraft.  It doesn't look like the fix held.  We will let you know if we are able to transfer you to another plane or wait until we find another fix."  So we wait and we wait and we wait some more.  15 minutes later, the pilot, "Ladies and gentlemen - this aircraft is grounded.  You need to return to the terminal and we will try and find another aircraft to load you on so that we can continue to Bangor.  We are sorry for the inconvenience."  So after 75 minutes of sitting at the gate, we grab all our stuff and trudge back into the terminal hoping that another aircraft  can be found.  By this time it is 11pm in Detroit so all of the shops are closed.  We hadn't had anything to eat since lunch and the only things that we could find were vending machines.  The machine ended up taking my money but not giving anything back.

Now during all this time of waiting, we had a car waiting for us in Bangor.  We had made a special arrangement with Avis to have some one at the counter when we got there so we could pick up a car to go to the hotel.  Doesn't sound bad right?  Well, they normally closed the counter at 11pm.  We had made an arrangement with them to have some one there when we got in at midnight (our original time).  Now we are still in Detroit at 11pm and we still had a 1 hour and 40 minute flight to go.  So Karl called the counter and told them what was going on and the clerk told us not to worry - he would stay there until we got there!!!  We finally boarded another plane at 11:15pm and headed out to the runway.  But another delay appeared.  They had to de-ice us!  So that took another 20 minutes.  We finally showed up in Bangor at 2am today and the car counter clerk was still there!!!!!  I will say that Avis is Bangor goes the extra mile for their customers.

Hopefully now that our trip has started, no other problems will show their ugly heads.