Let me just advise all of you, if I ever book a flight, it is in your best interest to actively avoid travelling on the same day as me. Because freakish weather events seem to shadow my travel plans. When I originally booked this trip ages ago, I had the choice between a super long layover and a short layover in Newark. Wise traveler that I am, I thought, hmm, summer in D.C.=afternoon thunderstorms, I better pick the long, six hour layover, just in case. THANK. Goodness. Thursday brought notsomuch thunderstorms to the entire east coast. But a freaking monsoon.
I have now travelled through enough bad weather events to know that the key to keeping everyone content in these situations is super regular announcements by the gate agents. Even if they have nothing new to report, that little bit of communication just seems to help. What does not help in these situations? Gate agents going silent and/or making sporadic announcements on a PA system that DOES NOT WORK! Guess which situation I found myself in on Thursday?
I was number four on the very long standby list for getting on an earlier flight. I knew this because Continental has this info easily accessible on their website (one of the very few brownie points that the airline earned with me). When an earlier flight was boarding, I went up to the gate agent and asked what the status of the standby list was. She proceeded to say that she had been paging all of us but no one had answered. Um, mind you, I was sitting right in the gate area, my hearing fine, and heard nothing. I had noticed that the gate was eerily quiet despite the gate agents repeatedly speaking into the PA mic.
When I mentioned to her that the PA system seemed to be not working, she unleashed a wrath of anger that somehow made the broken PA, the weather, and her existence as a gate agent my fault. As this was happening, the other gate agent was arguing with another passenger whose confirmed seat on the flight had somehow been switched to a standby seat and he had lost the seat. The other passengers in the gate area were descending on the desk angrily. I have never been involved in a riot but I think this had all of makings of one.
So I took a deep breath, stepped back, picked up my Blackberry and Googled the phone number for Continental’s customer service desk. And then I did what any self-respecting five-year old would do. I tattled.
The customer service rep on the phone was so helpful and apologetic and as he spoke with me, he got in contact with the director of operations for the airline at the airport to report the situation. Minutes after I ended the call, I took some glee in watching said director storm into the gate area (why he was not there already on a crazy travel day is a question I will let go for now) and take over. From that moment forward, frequent announcements were made using the functioning PA system at the next gate area over.
Victory.
After several delays, I arrived 20 minutes before my Bristol bound flight started boarding. Yep my six-hour layover was reduced to a 20 minute layover. Just enough time for me to dash over to Auntie Anne’s and grab a pretzel for dinner.
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