Ah, back in sunny South Carolina. After below-zero temps in Chicago yesterday, 35 degrees here seems downright balmy.
My travels yesterday were uneventful. Because there are so many business travelers making the trek from Atlanta to Chicago and back, the chances of getting an upgrade to first class are remote indeed. The situation was further complicated because an earlier flight to Atlanta had been canceled. I did have an exit row for both flights, so that was at least some consolation.
I had more than two hours to kill before my connecting flight to Greenville when my plane landed in Atlanta around 5:15 yesterday. My flight was out of the B concourse. As I walked to my gate I stopped and consulted the big departure board. I saw that my flight was delayed 15 minutes and now wouldn't be taking off until 7:30. I glanced up and noticed the flight scheduled to Greenville before mine was still at its gate, delayed until 6:05.
Often the Atlanta/Greenville schedule is made by the same plane that just goes back and forth several times a day. If that were the case here, there was no way my flight was only going to be delayed only 15 minutes. I calculated 45 minutes to an hour would be more like it. Making a management decision, I headed to the D concourse from which the earlier flight was set to depart. I approached the gate as the first passengers were boarding. Fifteen minutes later I was still standing patiently at the podium waiting for a Delta gate person to pay some attention to me. Because a family from France was having some sort of issue with their boarding passes matching their passports, a Red Coat customer service person had been summoned to the gate. Finally finishing with them, she turned her attention to me. Five minutes later I walked on the plane, taking the last open seat.
I arrived home a bout 90 minutes earlier than originally scheduled and probably more than two hours earlier than my original flight arrived.
I got off the plane to find a Cadillac CTS-V Wagon waiting for me. Do I have a great job or what! Well, I actually don't have a job; but if you are going to starve, it's terrific motoring around from place to place in one of the hottest performance cars on the planet. 6.2-liter supercharged V8 and a slick-shifting six-speed manual tranny, what else do you want? If I get through the next few days without a speeding ticket, it will be a miracle. I just don't have the discipline to keep 556 horsepower reined in to heed the speed limits, particularly the ridiculously low ones around Greenville.
I've had too much work to catch up on today to take this Caddy out and put it through its paces, but tomorrow is another day. Ya gotta love 0-60 in under five seconds!
You're lucky they didn't charge you extra to take the advance flight. One time Ron Beasley and I landed in Atlanta early and I saw that an earlier flight to Asheville was still at the gate. We went to the gate and the guy said, sure, there were seats. Then he said there would be $50 added on. When we asked why, he said because we had special fare tix. But isn't to your advantage for us to use the seats on this flight and make the seats on the later flight available to others, we argued. To no avail, of course. And you wonder why airlines are having problems. This was Delta, btw. Essentially, we told him the plane could just go take off with empty seats on it. Politely, of course. We stopped at a Delta ticket counter down the corridor and got the same nonsense as an explanation.
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