After dangerously swerving around on the icy slick highways leading away from Troy, my taxicab finally arrived at Albany Airport last Friday. I expected that my 6:45 am flight might be delayed somewhat, as the airplane was probably still being de-iced. However, I didn’t think that it would take more than 30 minutes because the ice storm that struck the Capitol Region had ended a number of hours earlier and airport maintenance crews had plenty of time by then to carry out de-icing process.
About 10 minutes prior to the scheduled boarding time, the airline officials announced that there would be a 15-minute delay.
About 35 minutes later, I started getting anxious. I still had not boarded the airplane, and no update to the departure time had been announced. Finally, a U.S. Air official announced on the loudspeaker that boarding would be delayed indefinitely. Apparently, maintenance crews hadn’t even begun to de-ice our airplane and they were still in the process of de-icing other planes.
Four hours later, our plane still had not been de-iced, and airline officials made the decision to merge our flight with another one scheduled for 11 am. They also announced that our flight’s departure would be delayed at least an hour more.
At 12:50 pm, more than six hours after my flight had originally been scheduled to depart, passengers were finally allowed to begin boarding the plane. We all sighed and slowly made our way onto the aircraft.
As the airplane began taxiing, the pilot came on the air—speaking in an obviously frustrated tone—-to encourage passengers to complain about the shoddy service and gave us the phone numbers of the local airport and U.S. Air officials. As he put it, Albany Airport had “dropped the ball.” A routine one-hour flight from Albany to Pittsburgh had turned into six hours.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for tight safety precautions, especially when the weather outside is particularly foul. However, I also stand for taking responsibility for getting your job done when others depend on you. There is absolutely no reason that Albany Airport maintenance crews should have taken seven hours to get our flight safely on its way.
The carelessness of airport and U.S. Air officials had messed up the day for all of us: the pilots, the flight attendants, and the passengers. By the time I arrived at Pittsburgh International Airport at 2 pm, I had already missed most of an open house for students who were accepted into Carnegie Mellon’s human computer interaction master’s program. I had been anticipating all of the activities scheduled for that day for a number of weeks, but was only able to be present for the closing discussion session and chat with the professors. You would think that paying $300 for the flight would get you better service than that, wouldn’t you?
