Off Wing Opinion

The next time you want to go somewhere on a whim, remember this cautionary tale from Off Wing reader Dave Smith:

So on Monday i decided, on a whim, to join my friend Will for a few days of fun in New Orleans. Now it appears that i am in the dead center of what will soon be one enormous toilet bowl. All flights are canceled and taxis are getting very hard to find. Gotta go now and figure out how to get out of here!

Dave sent that message two hours ago. Get the Hell out of there buddy.

UPDATE: Dave made it out of New Orleans, but it wasn't easy:

Wow - it has been a very interesting day, indeed! I think i caught the last taxi out of the city to the airport, where we found that Northwest Airlines had stranded thousands of people in the path of the storm by canceling all of their flights and abandoning their ticketing desks (while all other airlines kept flying - in clear skies - for another 4-5 hours!). We waved enough cash in front of a taxi driver to get him to drive us to Baton Rouge - normally a 75 minute drive, which took five hours. All the while i was on the phone with Northwest, who said their flights were full except for first class, for which i'd have to pay $600, and they refused to book me on another airline.

The point was moot, since when we got to Baton Rouge, Northwest had canceled all of their flights (while other airlines *added* flights to help people get out!). Fortunately, there was still one person at the ticketing counter, who told me i was out of luck. She was only willing to print out my tickets and suggested that i go to all the other airlines and see if i could get on standby, since they were all full. But a girl at the Delta counter offered to fly me to Atlanta and get me home the following morning, and then suggested i check with American. I got the last seat on their flight to Dallas, where i am typing this message while i await a flight back to D.C. tonight. Whew!

As the plane filled up, an American gate staffer came down the jetway to tell the pilot that they had a couple of people who were on standby and were on their way to the gate. The pilot told him to close the door, because we needed to go, *NOW*. It was just a little gusty, but some crazy cloud formations filled the sky to the south as we took off. What an experience!

Looks like Northwest Airlines hasn't exactly covered itself in glory. Perhaps the bug out had something to do with the mechanics strike?

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2005 at 11:42 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.