Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I’m sitting in the food court in Chicago O’Hare’s K Terminal; I just arrived from Washington Reagan National on a flight that was delayed 90 minutes due to weather here in the (ahem) Windy City.

As an aside, I’d love to meet the genius who decided Chicago was a good place for a major hub airport. Indianapolis is closer to the center of the country and has far fewer weather problems. I’d pay real money to talk for just five minutes to whoever made that call.

But I digress.

I’m connecting to a flight to Kansas City that was scheduled to depart at 8:45 p.m. and showing on-time when we left Reagan. We arrived short of the gate at 8:25 and waited for a ground crew to guide us in. They finally arrived, then we waited for a gate agent to move the jetway into position.

As I deplaned (how company nobody ever debuses or deboats?), I asked the gate agent if it was possible to call the gate for the Kansas City flight to let them know I was on my way. I have Platinum status with American and I’m delivering a keynote talk at 8 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday) morning; this flight is the only way I can get there short of taking a flight into St. Louis and driving to Kansas City from there. (I can’t tell you how many times one of my flights has sat at the gate because, according to the pilot or flight attendant, we’re waiting for a connecting passenger. Yet never, not once, has a plane waited for me.)

The gate agent told me she had to stay on the jetway and the jetway phone only connected her to other G gates. After some prodding, she finally tried to call another G gate so they could contact the agent at the Kansas City gate here in the K terminal.

But nobody answered. Finally, a fellow passenger waiting in the jetway for her carry-on bag, asked if I had the flight number. It told her what it was and she punched it into her smartphone. (I would have done this myself except that I’d sapped my phone’s battery talking to Orbitz and American about alternate routes to Kansas City while sitting on the tarmac in D.C.) In less than a minute, she said, “You’re going to Kansas City? That flight is delayed until 10:40.”

I have never been happier to be on a delayed flight.

But it’s mind-boggling that a passenger with a mobile phone has access to more information than an American Airlines gate agent.

Something is seriously wrong here.

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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