I spent the weekend in Milwaukee and Antioch, IL for my cousin Eddie’s wedding. Great times were had by all, but the trip home was an ordeal.
I could have sworn I heard that blades less than 4 inches were allowed on flights and the mini Swiss Army knife I keep on my keychain would be fine. Turns out you’re only allowed to bring on scissors with blades less than four inches. Knives are still banned, so I lost my dull two inch knife.
The flight left close to on time, but as we approached Philly we had to wait about a half hour to land. I lost count of how many times we circled the airport.
The flight wouldn’t have been too bad except for the two Ivy League profs in the seats behind me talking so loud the whole plane could hear them. Not only that, but they were having the most boring conversation on Earth. (Parents are pushy when their genius kids don’t get in to Princeton. Who knew?)
We landed and went down to the Terminal F baggage claim and there was a huge group of passengers waiting for their bags. Something was wrong with their system and none of the bags were making it to the terminal. Every few minutes a bag or two would come up on the conveyor belt, so it was about 45 minutes before we got all our luggage. But we were in luck! The shuttle bus to the economy lot just pulled up and we ran to catch it.
The bus pulled away but at the last minute it stopped and let us on. Our luck had turned.
For the worse.
I noticed everyone on the bus was wearing airline uniforms. We were on the bus to the employee lot, which looks exactly like the economy lot bus except it says “Employee Lot” on the front. We only saw the back.
We rode all the way to the secret place where pilots, flight attendants, sky caps, cashiers, and ticket agents park their cars and then had to wait a few minutes while the drivers changed shifts. I asked the bus driver if he could drive us over to the economy lot, but he said no. We had to ride back to the airport and then walk through it again from departures to the Terminal A baggage claim. doh.
We finally made our way back and got on the right bus. The bus was empty since we were at Terminal A, which gave us front row seats for the grand finale of this crazy day. By the time the bus picked up passengers from C it was completely full. We passed Terminal D and the bus driver briefly opened the door to tell the waiting passengers there would be another bus in 2 minutes. We drove to Terminal F, where I once again remind you is home to the faulty baggage claim system.
The driver opened the door again to tell the waiters another bus would be there soon when all of a sudden people started flooding on to the bus. Some European travelers were ticked about having to wait two hours for their bags and a shouting match erupted between the bus driver and the people trying to get on the bus. He refused to go and they refused to get off. Everyone on the bus started yelling at our European visitors to get the hell off the bus and listen to the bus driver.
Finally, the bus driver let them stay as long as they got behind the yellow line. They ended up coming into the middle of the bus where we were. Words were exchanged between them, the passengers, and the bus driver (over the intercom) for the duration of the ride.
Oh well, that’s the story of our trip from MKE to PHL. It took us about 3 hours from when we landed to when we got home.
Comments
One response to “MKE – PHL”
Man, that sucks big time.
Reminds me of my most recent trip to Phoenix. I left in the evening from BWI and had to connect through Denver. I had about an hour and a half between flights in DEN. Well the first plane, after being delayed for about two hours, was ruled out for some sort of mechanical problem. So they changed our gate to another plane that would be available in 20 minutes. So we loaded on to that plane and I ended up having to sit next to two obnoxious dumbasses talking about their stupid golf trip and hitting on the flight attendant (we’ll meet these guys again later).
Well, after 45 minutes of sitting on that plane trying to fix ANOTHER mechanical issue, we were taken off and told to go back to the original gate, where a third plane would be arriving in about an hour and would then go onto Phoenix. At this point, it’s been about four hours in Denver. Well, a lot of people made for the bar, but I decided I wasn’t going to risk missing any important info and stayed at the gate.
So the plane arrives, and we all load up…except for the stupid golf guys who had gone to the bar. There was a big discussion about whether to close the doors on them and strand them in DEN for the night among the crew, and just as they were shutting the doors they ran through into the cabin. Damn. But by that time they were so drunk they passed out. Finally rolled into Phoenix at about 1:45 AM….was oringinally schedule to come in sometime around 9:00 PM All in all it took me something like ten and a half hours to get to Phoenix.