According to the Los Angeles Times, some 38 million travelers took to the skies over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. I can vouch for this figure, since I had to elbow my way through almost that many people to make my flights over that same time period.
I can give the traveling public and airline industry high marks. No one seemed overwrought over heightened security concerns, and both carriers and passengers rolled with the weather punches pretty admirably.
According to the Los Angeles Times, some 38 million travelers took to the skies over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. I can vouch for this figure, since I had to elbow my way through almost that many people to make my flights over that same time period.
I can give the traveling public and airline industry high marks. No one seemed overwrought over heightened security concerns, and both carriers and passengers rolled with the weather punches pretty admirably.
My trip was not without hitches. Assuming the role of Mr. Nice Guy, I responded to the page for exit row volunteers. Despite the very friendly gate agent’s demonstrated gratitude and her assurance of greater legroom in my new seat assignment, I discovered she was wrong about the legroom and forgot to mention the seat I was now in did not recline one bit.
No matter, I endured the hour and 45 minutes Atlanta and got a helpful crewmember to point out the train that would whisk me to my connecting flight’s gate, another concourse down in Delta’s sprawling hub. Luckily, my two flights, though slated for late in the evening, suffered no scheduling problems from earlier-in-the-day problems.
My return was a bit uglier. Though my first-of-the-morning flight was listed online as on time, the terminal departures monitor showed it delayed some the 90 minutes later.
Delta did e-mail and text regarding this delay 48 minutes before the original departure time.
Sadly, this was 15 minutes after I arrived at the airport. As this postponement was due to my aircraft not flying to the airport the night before, as originally planned, one would think Delta would have known about any delay much sooner.
Still, my 12-year-old gate agent (at least he seemed that young) courteously assured me I would still have 30 minutes to change planes in Atlanta if all went according to plan. And I likely would have, had the jetway not malfunctioned, refusing to cuddle up to the arriving flight’s exit door and allow its passengers to disembark.
Needless to say, confirming the jetway’s uselessness and then changing gates added to our lateness; I arrived in Atlanta about five minutes after my connecting flight took off. The nice people at Delta reservations gave me the next available confirmed seat, scheduled to leave 7 ½ hours later. Happily, they also gave me standby status on the four homebound flights before that. Even more happily, I got on the very next plane, cutting my wait to two hours.
Considering all of the air travel horrors you hear about, I thought myself lucky. What is more, my standby seat ended up in a section of the aircraft that sported for extra inches of legroom, rendering some Karmatic justice.
And if that wasn’t enough, the seat next to me was occupied by a precocious eight-year-old who was happy to strike up an intelligent conversation, making our time in the air fly by.
Flying during the holidays is inherently chaotic and stressful. To have the plans go awry and yet have a pleasant experience is probably as much of a Christmas miracle as I can hope for.
