We were up at 4:15 AM, arrived at the airport at 5 for our 6 AM departure from Savannah. At about 5:45 AM I get an alert on my cell phone from United Airlines indicated the flight would now depart at 6:40 AM. The gate agent had said we would be 10 minutes late waiting for the flight crew to arrive.
The 6:40 departure would mis-connect with our flight from Dulles to Westchester County so I headed up to the gate and informed the gate agent of my recent phone alert from her company. She had not bee notified yet. Once she got notification she proceeded to offer us a flight on US Scareways into Westchester arriving at 12:30. I opted for a United flight into LaGuardia that would arrive at 1:50PM figuring it would take me that long to get back into New York from White Plains. Katy is not much for train rides. In addition, if we flew Scareways there was the possibility that I would not get credit on the double EQM promotion.
The flight finally left Savannah at about 7:30 AM and upon arrival in Washington, we headed to the lounge for breakfast and reading the morning papers.
The flight left the gate from Dulles on time and we headed out to the active runway only to stop short for the dreaded Air Traffic Delay. Our 12:20 PM departure finally took off at 1:30 PM after sitting on the hot tarmac for 1 hour and ten minutes.
Here are my questions:
If the crew was late arriving last night into Savannah, and they know that they need a full 8 hour rest before flying the next day, why don’t they report that on arrival that evening and give the gate agents and computers more time to re-book us that are going to miss our connections in the morning?
And how is it possible on a bluebird sunny day in both New York and Washington that Air Traffic Control has to hold a flight for 1 hours and 10 minutes before take off?
I thought the capacity was down, fewer flights were being flown, schedules shifted around to prevent this and there were 41 million less airline trips taken so far this year than last?
As Katy pointed out while sitting on the tarmac, we have been travelling 9 hours and had traveled all of 515 miles. Our day is still not done.
