New Year's at 27,000 Feet

If you're a follower on Facebook, you may know the story of the New Year's Eve had by The Missus Herself and Your Humble Scribe.

We headed to Reagan National, arriving at about 1300 Eastern Standard Time to catch a 1500 flight (AA 5036) to PVD (the airport, not the eye condition).

Long story short, we arrived back at our abode in Little Rhody around 0200, New Year's Day.

A friend of mine described Gate 35X at Reagan National as "America's least favorite gate" and the Bombardier CRJ-200 as "America's least favorite jet." All that really means is that Gate 35X is where all the regional flights start and end out of Reagan. It's the puddle jumper area of the airport, the CRJ-200 is the puddle jumper.

Now I don't feel that way, if you've ever flown out of Fresno, there is a gate there which is somewhat famous for never, ever, having a flight leave on time. It's almost as if it were in California.

Oh wait, it is.

At any rate, there comes a time when a thing which has always worked perfectly in the past has a moment when almost nothing seems to go right.

So it was to be on New Year's Eve of 2018.

Boarding was delayed, eventually we got on a bus to ride out to the aircraft. Yes, a bus. For the magic of Gate 35X is that it is where one catches a bus to get to an aircraft. No jetway, no stroll down a long telescoping corridor to board a plane. Nope, you ride the bus to the jet, then walk across the tarmac to climb a Rube Goldberg looking contraption to get on the aircraft.

Which we did.

We taxied out, sat for an unconscionable length of time, a long enough time period that I suspected aircraft system problems, not waiting for our turn to take off problems.

Bingo. I got bingo...

The pilot described it as a "maintenance issue" which would "not reset." In maintainer terms, a circuit breaker kept popping. Reset it and it would pop again. A sure indication of electrical problems with which one should not take the jet up into the wild blue yonder.

So we did not.

So back to the terminal we went, back to Gate 35X. Yay us.

After a rather breathless wait (about an hour), maintenance said, "We fixed it, you're good to go."

So we repeated the evolution. Guess what?

Yup, circuit breaker did it again. When the pilot came on over the intercom he sounded pissed off. As we disembarked to go back to Gate 35X the pilot was standing in the cockpit entrance. As I passed him, I remarked, "Maybe it's time to break out the wiring diagrams."

He shook his head and said, "Yup, somebody needs to do just that."

Computers have turned aircraft maintainers into box pullers. Swap the box, try again. But sometimes it's the wires between the boxes. Or two boxes contributing to a problem which makes the diagnostic computer scratch its head (metaphorically of course) then tell itself, "Pick one, ya got a fifty-fifty shot."

This time, the computer picked wrong and back to the terminal we went. Hello Gate 35X, my old friend.

Where we waited.

Now this is actually a tale of two flights to Providence: AA 5036, the 1500 flight, and AA 5557, the 1350 flight. AA 5557 actually broke first (not a pilot scheduling problem, not a crew rest problem, something actually broke on the jet) and a lot of people on that flight switched to AA 5036. Which, if you've been paying attention, we boarded and taxied out to the runway upon twice. Yup, twice.

Now the magical American Airlines notification system was keeping me apace of the developments with AA 5036. They kept changing the departure time, but always to something implausible, like ten minutes from now (not possible, the bus ride takes that long) or ten minutes in the past. (Which I also consider not possible as if American Airlines have invented a time machine, they could go into the past and fix the jet before it broke, or something.)

Anyhoo, I do believe that particular notification application needs a little work. The algorithm is, ya know, faulty. As in crap, as in "if anything goes wrong, make something up, anything." (At this point I'll make a snide remark about "self driving cars" and the absolute insanity of thinking that might actually happen anytime soon. Software is hard. DAMHIK)

So where were we? Ah yes, back in the terminal (at Gate 35X). As I'm pondering the mysteries of air travel and posting of our adventures on Facebook, my phone chimes. "Hhmm, a text message..."

"Oh bother," says I. The flight, she is cancelled. AA 5036 is no more, it's an ex-flight to Providence and if American Airlines hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies, it would have rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, it would...

But I digress.

Up to the counter I went and asked the nice lady, "Now what?"

"I can transfer you to the earlier flight, well, what was supposed to be the earlier flight, flight AA 5557."

Looking first one way, and then the other, I asked, "Seriously? You still have hopes for that one?"

"Well, yes. It's broken but maintenance says they can fix it. Not fast, but today."

"Well, I'm game, let's do it."

So I did. And we waited...

And waited...

People were leaving, going to go get a hotel room (on New Year's Eve mind you), or making other arrangements. One lady tried to talk a few people into catching the train to Providence at about $240 per ticket. No takers, but she left, to do just that, catch a train.

Eventually we were down to fifteen people. Fifteen diehards who were determined to get to Providence by air that very night. It was us versus the airline. They were hoping we'd all leave, we were calling their bluff. "Maintenance says they can fix it, we believe them."

And we waited.

One of my fellow passengers remarked to me, "I talked to a gate agent, he said that there is only a 20% chance of the flight going out tonight."

To which I replied, "A gate agent. Not an aircraft maintainer. And what is this alleged 'expert' basing this on? Their talent in making garbled announcements over the PA system."

The fellow chuckled and nodded, seeing my point.

Eventually though, the maintainers came through (which swelled this old maintainer's heart with pride) and we boarded the bus. To the jet we went and we taxied.

We stopped. All awaited with bated breath for the aircraft to continue with no discouraging announcements from the pilot. I do believe that we willed that aircraft to move and to then lift into the air once upon the runway. Which it did.

We flew through a cloud-shrouded, rainy, blustery night. We lost sight of the ground soon after take off and didn't regain sight of old Mother Earth until we broke out of a very low ceiling on the approach to Providence. A sigh of relief was heard as the jet touched down and we taxied into PVD (the airport, not the eye condition).

So The Missus Herself and Your Humble Scribe greeted the year 2019 at 27,000 feet, somewhere over New Jersey I think.

Now I could take that as a bad omen, or I could take it as a prime example of "Shit happens." I tend to go with the latter. At any rate, I wish you all a most prosperous, and happy, New Year.

Totally off topic (hey, I let you do it, so I can do it too) here's a song I heard on the radio whilst vacationing down in Maryland. Yes, Maryland, only one day in Virginia, which surprised me, that wasn't in the plan. But no plan survives contact with real life. You can take that to the bank. The only reason to have a plan is so you don't appear clueless, or unprepared. But yes, I digress. I really like this tune, hadn't heard it in a very long time.

Hey, it was the '80s. I loved the '80s.