There is nothing better than a nice long Sunday night layover at LAX.
Wait, that is not the right thought.
There is nothing worse than a nice long layover at LAX on a Sunday night.
That is just what I had the weekend before last, as it was not one, but two canceled Sunday night flights trying to get home.
There had been spring football in Los Angeles after three weeks of duty in New York. My announcer is doing a morning show in NY, so he does his games out there. He was on vacation for a couple weeks, so I went to LA to help out in the studio with game stats. He is back in action the next three weeks, so it’s back to New York. Then he is gone one, and we then go back to LA.
You get the drift.
We are also on the road for the playoffs, but that is for another column in June.
Back to my delays.
I had a connection through Dallas, so I was waiting for a plane to Texas. Literally the morning before, I had gotten caught up in some really nasty thunderstorms in Dallas waiting to get to California, and came within minutes of missing the flight west.
Here is how that went.
We flew from Indy to Dallas; we were right on time (5 am departure from Indy).
We landed in a pretty good rain storm, but I have landed in lots of rain storms. Almost crashed in one last fall.
But we were on the ground safely. We taxied to the assigned gate to find that all gates had been closed due to lightning in the area. A wise call, and a safety priority for the ground crews.
So we sat in the plane.
And sat.
And sat.
You have been on these chats with me to know what happened next.
We used up all the time I had between flights. I was getting off my first plane about the time my second one to California was supposed to leave.
You also know that my good fortune had it that the flight to LA was the first one for that plane out of that gate, so it could leave on time, which is what all airlines base their success on. They didn’t care who was late or why.
My second flight was not delayed by the gate closures, so I had a great chance of missing that plane.
I walked a mile to then get on the train to get to the terminal on the other side of the airport, and walked a half-mile to the gate.
There was joy in my face as the door was still open. The gate agent said that things were slow because the plane had not gotten fueled up before things were stopped. I got on and rejoiced.
Then, they closed the ramps again.
We sat another 90 minutes waiting for the last of the storm to pass over, and then we took to the skies. That part was not an issues, since I was going to my last stop, and had lots of time before the first game.
Okay, can we get back to Sunday night?
Okay.
It’s after midnight and we are loading up, heading for Dallas, where the storms had passed and I had ample time to catch my early-morning flight back to Indy.
We were all aboard. I even got a last-minute upgrade so I had a nice seat in first class.
Then the pilot comes on.
“Folks, we are going to be delayed leaving. It seems this plane hit a bird coming in and things have to be checked out.”
Airplanes hit birds all the time, and I am 100 percent okay with checking everything out, but this plane landed over two hours ago – why wasn’t that bird-strike reported and checked when they landed?
Questions abounded, but we sat.
And sat.
And sat.
Repetitive non-motion.
After about 45 minutes, the gate agent comes on and says that due to the bird-strike, the plane has been grounded and would not be flying.
It was just into Monday morning, and I understand all the mechanics and fix-it folks are not at the airport, but I sensed my connecting time was in danger.
The gate agent said they had another plane for us, so all we needed to do was walk from Terminal 5 to Terminal 4 and find that new gate.
We all got our steps in as we sojourned off.
There was a plane waiting, and we sat around for another 45 minutes waiting to board. It was the same type of plane, so I didn’t lose my upgrade.
What was lost was all the connection time in Dallas. It was leave or spend a lot of Monday waiting for the next flight in Texas.
Instead, I did that waiting right there at LAX.
As we were walking down the jet-bridge to get on, the gate agent stopped everything and walked us all back out,
The mechanics doing the quick run-through saw that the emergency lighting strips were flickering, and no one was getting on until that was fixed. No flickering!
Well, after another 45 minutes they said that this second plane was not well enough to fly, and that now, even the airline didn’t know what to do.
They started rebooking folks, some of whom had much bigger travel trouble.
I got my handy app out and started looking.
First, there were no seats on anything going to Texas for most of Monday. It was starting to look like Tuesday for me, and that was not a good option. I was already missing a high school game Monday. I did not want to miss Tuesday anything.
So at 3 am in Los Angeles, I called Fox Emergency Travel.
A very nice, and very helpful person was able to book me on a direct flight. It wasn’t until noon, but I was going to sit that long someplace, so getting on a direct flight was a better choice.
So that was handled.
Then, as they brought more agents to the area to help with re-booking, the young man at the computer to my right asked for any fliers that had status with the airline.
That was me, so I went up to make sure my stuff had been changed. My getting on the direct would open up a standby seat for someone (and an upgrade).
The nice young man, dressed in a shirt and tie with a clumsy yellow safety jacket over it pulled up my ticket and said that yes, it was already in the system that I was bypassing Dallas.
Then he said, “Holy Cow, you are platinum plus!”
He apologized that he couldn’t get me a first-class ticket to Indy, but he was nice. He also explained the bird-strike thing. The previous crew had reported the hit, and it had been checked out, but when the co-pilot did his walk-around, he found a streak of bird-blood on one of the engines.
That is a major red flag, and requires lots more checking. The plane was grounded.
The flickering lights had no answer…
He then told me I was heading back to Terminal 5 for my flight.
Want the funny part of it – I was going back to the exact same gate I had been at to start the adventure!
After seven more hours, I was back on another plane and that one lifted off, flew me to Indiana, and I had the topic for my next column.
I did get to LA a lot faster and easier this last weekend. Two direct flights.
And it’s New York for the next three. Time will tell.
Safe travels.
Jeff Nelson is a frequent contributor to the Journal Review and works professionally for Fox Sports assisting with NFL broadcasts and the Indiana Pacers.
