21 hour travel ordeal
Mar. 17th, 2026 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujThe schedule: leave the hotel at 9 AM PDT, return car, get on flight, get off flight in time to take a train which gets me home at 9 PM EDT.
The actuality: leave the hotel at 8:30, because I decided that maybe I should be a little more conservative about LA traffic – this was a good choice – return car, wait too long for a bus back to the airport from the rental car center, get on flight, have it taxi around the airport a few times, get off flight, wait around, get on flight, sit at gate for two hours, get off flight, panic for a while, get on flight, get off flight in time to take a train which gets me home at 9 AM EDT the following day. Maybe this was just the karma but followed me from my previous traffic adventure.
Gory details:
The rental car center was easy to find, and there was a nice gas station very close, and I didn't care how much it cost because I only got 3 gallons (actually I was surprised: I had expected 2 gallons, but I guess sitting in traffic, which I did a lot on those Saturday failures, is really bad in a gas car). However, when you wanted to get on the bus to go back to the airport, they sorted you into which rental car agency you had used, and so there were 10 different bus stops and they made you go to the one appropriate for your company. Now, they only "made" me, by asking and then telling me to go to bus stop N, and I could have gone to a different stop and they wouldn't have known, but the stops are far enough apart that it would be hard to make the trot when you saw a bus coming, and they weren't even labeled by company so you wouldn't know whether to trot. This is terribly temporary because the intent is to have a little train that goes straight to the airport, but it's not finished. So I was glad I left half an hour extra.
Security was fine; the shutdown stuff doesn't seem to be spilling over into TSA yet. Got to the gate, boarded the plane, got a spot for my carry-on, which was in question because I didn't pay extra. Pushed back. Sat there. Eventually the captain gets on the horn and tells us that there is a maintenance issue and they have to go back to gate, so they do that, and then we wait another hour while maintenance farts around. Pushed back again. Actually taxied a little way. But then stopped, and sat for another hour, part of which was waiting for another gate to open, because while we were taxiing our gate got used by another plane that just landed. At this point they decide to give up on this plane, and off we get. There is another plane available. But all this farting around has made it so that the pilots would work for too long and there could be a fatigue issue, and there are rules about that. So they had to arrange for another cockpit crew.
They should have also arranged for another cabin crew. Because by the time we got the plane and the cockpit crew, they made an announcement about boarding where they said we have to board orderly and efficiently because the cabin crew is going to timeout in half an hour. We succeed, as far as I can tell, in getting on efficiently.
However, this is a different type of plane. So we sat for a while at the gate, and they made an announcement and sent a bunch of people from the middle of the plane to the back of the plane (it was a longer plane so all those seats were empty) for weight balancing, which pissed off the middle of the plane people, because they had paid for better seats, but they cooperated. And then they said something about needing to get some different dispatching things and some computer update, and I was like "why does that take longer than 30 seconds". And then we continued to sit there, and after another hour or so they get on the horn and they tell us that they are investigating the legality of the of the cabin crew continuing on this flight, meaning "we let them timeout and we're trying to dicker with some authority to let us just go". Apparently this dickering failed, because then they said "unfortunately we are going to cancel this flight so everybody get off".
I also have a theory that some of the waiting around was because the landing time in Boston would have been after 1 AM by now, and Boston doesn't like that. But that is complete speculation on my part. Anyway, 150 people get off this plane and now have no way to get Boston. They said "you can rebook with no penalty" – but you still have to pay the difference in the fare, it's just the $100 or whatever it is that they charge you for flight changes that gets waived. So they also offered just plain canceling. I went with the herd to the ticket counter, where we were all kvetching at each other and offering each other advice on using the app or the website. But JetBlue only had a small number of seats on a small number of flights available, and a lot of people were discovering that they were going to arrive on Wednesday.
I discovered that there was a flight leaving at 1 AM on American. It wasn't a nonstop, connecting through Chicago, but by this point I was like "I'm totally trashed, I hate red eyes, whatever, I'm going to do it". So I paid for that, and canceled my JetBlue. And then it was leaving in five hours so I checked in. Unfortunately during check-in I discovered that the flight was delayed due to "crew rest requirements", meaning that the incoming crew had come too late to have a long enough sleep before getting on a new flight. Not that surprising given that the East Coast was busy having a bunch of weather and so there were a lot of delayed flights getting out of the East Coast on Monday. Which means that I wouldn't have made the connecting flight. Also, something was wrong with the website and it didn't want to give me a boarding pass. Whether that was related, I don't know.
So off I go to the American ticket counter. LAX is big! It was far! That's okay, I need the exercise. So I explained my issue, and the ticket agent tries to fix my connecting flight, but the next flight from Chicago to Boston was full and the flight after that was at 4 PM, and I was like "I'll just suck it up, and maybe I'll try to stand by on the earlier flight". But then she noticed that there was a 10 PM direct to Boston flight, leaving in 45 minutes. There was one seat left, so she put me on standby for it, and I was the first person in line for standby, and she said "run". I didn't really run, but I booked it as best I can, and I made it in plenty of time, despite it also being pretty far, even just inside one terminal. I did get the standby, and in fact another couple of people got standby as well, so I guess some seats were available because connecting people didn't arrive? Who knows.
It was a redeye, it was a middle seat, it wasn't great, but time passed rather quickly between 2 AM and 5 AM, so I must've slept some of the time. Then I had a two hour nap after I got home, with my cat, in my own bed, and that was really nice. So I'm a little trashed today, but it's okay, I don't have to be anywhere!
The actuality: leave the hotel at 8:30, because I decided that maybe I should be a little more conservative about LA traffic – this was a good choice – return car, wait too long for a bus back to the airport from the rental car center, get on flight, have it taxi around the airport a few times, get off flight, wait around, get on flight, sit at gate for two hours, get off flight, panic for a while, get on flight, get off flight in time to take a train which gets me home at 9 AM EDT the following day. Maybe this was just the karma but followed me from my previous traffic adventure.
Gory details:
The rental car center was easy to find, and there was a nice gas station very close, and I didn't care how much it cost because I only got 3 gallons (actually I was surprised: I had expected 2 gallons, but I guess sitting in traffic, which I did a lot on those Saturday failures, is really bad in a gas car). However, when you wanted to get on the bus to go back to the airport, they sorted you into which rental car agency you had used, and so there were 10 different bus stops and they made you go to the one appropriate for your company. Now, they only "made" me, by asking and then telling me to go to bus stop N, and I could have gone to a different stop and they wouldn't have known, but the stops are far enough apart that it would be hard to make the trot when you saw a bus coming, and they weren't even labeled by company so you wouldn't know whether to trot. This is terribly temporary because the intent is to have a little train that goes straight to the airport, but it's not finished. So I was glad I left half an hour extra.
Security was fine; the shutdown stuff doesn't seem to be spilling over into TSA yet. Got to the gate, boarded the plane, got a spot for my carry-on, which was in question because I didn't pay extra. Pushed back. Sat there. Eventually the captain gets on the horn and tells us that there is a maintenance issue and they have to go back to gate, so they do that, and then we wait another hour while maintenance farts around. Pushed back again. Actually taxied a little way. But then stopped, and sat for another hour, part of which was waiting for another gate to open, because while we were taxiing our gate got used by another plane that just landed. At this point they decide to give up on this plane, and off we get. There is another plane available. But all this farting around has made it so that the pilots would work for too long and there could be a fatigue issue, and there are rules about that. So they had to arrange for another cockpit crew.
They should have also arranged for another cabin crew. Because by the time we got the plane and the cockpit crew, they made an announcement about boarding where they said we have to board orderly and efficiently because the cabin crew is going to timeout in half an hour. We succeed, as far as I can tell, in getting on efficiently.
However, this is a different type of plane. So we sat for a while at the gate, and they made an announcement and sent a bunch of people from the middle of the plane to the back of the plane (it was a longer plane so all those seats were empty) for weight balancing, which pissed off the middle of the plane people, because they had paid for better seats, but they cooperated. And then they said something about needing to get some different dispatching things and some computer update, and I was like "why does that take longer than 30 seconds". And then we continued to sit there, and after another hour or so they get on the horn and they tell us that they are investigating the legality of the of the cabin crew continuing on this flight, meaning "we let them timeout and we're trying to dicker with some authority to let us just go". Apparently this dickering failed, because then they said "unfortunately we are going to cancel this flight so everybody get off".
I also have a theory that some of the waiting around was because the landing time in Boston would have been after 1 AM by now, and Boston doesn't like that. But that is complete speculation on my part. Anyway, 150 people get off this plane and now have no way to get Boston. They said "you can rebook with no penalty" – but you still have to pay the difference in the fare, it's just the $100 or whatever it is that they charge you for flight changes that gets waived. So they also offered just plain canceling. I went with the herd to the ticket counter, where we were all kvetching at each other and offering each other advice on using the app or the website. But JetBlue only had a small number of seats on a small number of flights available, and a lot of people were discovering that they were going to arrive on Wednesday.
I discovered that there was a flight leaving at 1 AM on American. It wasn't a nonstop, connecting through Chicago, but by this point I was like "I'm totally trashed, I hate red eyes, whatever, I'm going to do it". So I paid for that, and canceled my JetBlue. And then it was leaving in five hours so I checked in. Unfortunately during check-in I discovered that the flight was delayed due to "crew rest requirements", meaning that the incoming crew had come too late to have a long enough sleep before getting on a new flight. Not that surprising given that the East Coast was busy having a bunch of weather and so there were a lot of delayed flights getting out of the East Coast on Monday. Which means that I wouldn't have made the connecting flight. Also, something was wrong with the website and it didn't want to give me a boarding pass. Whether that was related, I don't know.
So off I go to the American ticket counter. LAX is big! It was far! That's okay, I need the exercise. So I explained my issue, and the ticket agent tries to fix my connecting flight, but the next flight from Chicago to Boston was full and the flight after that was at 4 PM, and I was like "I'll just suck it up, and maybe I'll try to stand by on the earlier flight". But then she noticed that there was a 10 PM direct to Boston flight, leaving in 45 minutes. There was one seat left, so she put me on standby for it, and I was the first person in line for standby, and she said "run". I didn't really run, but I booked it as best I can, and I made it in plenty of time, despite it also being pretty far, even just inside one terminal. I did get the standby, and in fact another couple of people got standby as well, so I guess some seats were available because connecting people didn't arrive? Who knows.
It was a redeye, it was a middle seat, it wasn't great, but time passed rather quickly between 2 AM and 5 AM, so I must've slept some of the time. Then I had a two hour nap after I got home, with my cat, in my own bed, and that was really nice. So I'm a little trashed today, but it's okay, I don't have to be anywhere!
