This is a true story. The Artist and I traveled to Boise, Idaho a few weeks ago to spend a few days celebrating my dad’s 90th Birthday with him. The trip to Boise and the visit were great. The trip back to SoCal… not so much.
As our Alaska Air flight from Boise landed at Seattle’s
SeaTac Airport and began to taxi towards the terminal, I noticed that jets were
parked at every Gate around the terminal. I smiled at The Artist sitting next
to me and said, “Hmmm… that seems odd. Wonder why the Terminal is packed with
jets, and none of them are moving.”
It was a sign, and not a good one.
The Pilot keyed the intercom: “Folks… this is your Captain.
It seems there’s a full ground stop at Alaska’s SeaTac Terminal, so we’re gonna
taxi over to an open Gate on the other side of the Terminal. I’ll have more
information for you once we reach the Gate.” A few minutes later we slowly drew
up to an open jetway and stopped.
Once again, the captain spoke: “OK, folks… I’ve been
informed that we’ve landed in the middle of a nationwide ground stop that has
affected all of Alaska Air’s flights across the country, so no flights are
leaving SeaTac until further notice. It’s an IT issue that has everything
grounded for now. We found an open gate, but there’s no Gate Agent available to
assist with disembarking the aircraft, so we’ll have to sit tight for a few
minutes until we get some more information. Thanks for your patience.”
We looked at each other with wide eyes. Although we’d landed
at 5pm as scheduled, our connecting flight home to Orange Country was scheduled
to board at 5:40pm, so this was the last thing we wanted to hear.
30 minutes later, the captain said “OK folks… still no Gate
Agent available, so we’ll have to hang in there until we get one. Sorry about
the delay.”
As we sat there in our jet, 5:40pm came and went. We were
not amused.
Finally, at 6pm passengers began to disembark. I had nervous
thoughts about our carry-on luggage, whisked away in Boise to be checked
because there wasn’t enough room in the overhead storage. Once in the terminal,
the Departures screen didn’t list our connecting flight, which likely meant we missed
it. We began the long walk to the far side of the Terminal to assess the travel
damage and see what we could do.
After walking what seemed like two miles, we arrived at the terminal
Gate we were supposed to depart from, but our flight wasn’t listed on the Gate
monitor. I went up to the kiosk and spoke with the Agent:
Me: “Hi… we just got off our previous flight and I’m
wondering if we’ve missed Flight 717 to Orange County?”
Him: “Hi… no, you haven’t missed your flight because
everything’s backed up now due to the ground stop. Your flight is scheduled to
depart from this Gate, but the time is still to be determined. We’ll let you
know once we have more information.”
The Gate area was packed with people who were in the same
situation as us. We found two seats, parked ourselves and waited. It was now
6:15pm.
People kept streaming into the Gate area, and it was filled
with the sound of hundreds of conversations, dogs barking at each other from
their portable kennels, crying babies and continuous PA announcements of flight
delays and cancellations. As flights were canceled, people stood up and headed
out to claim their bags. The place was jammed.
At 7pm, our flight info flashed onto the Gate monitor and
the Agent spoke over the PA: “Attention passengers for flight 717 bound for
Orange County. Your aircraft is at the Gate and will be disembarking in
preparation for you to board, so please stand by for the boarding call.” The
Gate door opened, the passengers walked out, and the door closed behind them.
By 7:30pm, I had a sinking feeling. Since Santa Ana’s John
Wayne Airport has an 11pm curfew for arriving flights, we’d need to board
pronto for the three-hour flight to arrive before the curfew went into effect.
Our Gate door was still closed. At 8pm, just as I realized we wouldn’t make the
landing curfew, our flight info disappeared from the Gate monitor and another
flight was displayed. I jumped up to look at the Departures screen and saw that
flight 717 had been canceled. The Gate Agent announced that we could claim our
luggage in Baggage Claim carousels numbers 13 and 14. We looked at each other,
sighed heavily, stood up and headed back across the terminal to claim our bags.
After about 30 minutes, we found a small side alcove where The Artist could sit on the floor away from the scrum. I headed back into the mess, looking for our bags on the carousels or in the ever-growing luggage piles. The Artist watched hundreds of pairs of legs shuffling by.
As we trudged past the Alaska Air First Class Check-in area,
I noticed an Agent standing there looking at her phone and went up to her.
Me: “Hi… can you help me locate the Ticketing area? We need
to rebook our flight.”
Her: “Hello! Ticketing is down that escalator over there. Has
your flight been canceled?”
Me: “Yep, it was canceled at 8pm. We’ve been in Baggage
Claim for almost two hours waiting for our luggage and just found them.”
Her: “OK, well… so sorry for all the inconvenience, it’s
been a madhouse since the ground stop began, but I’m sure you already know
that. Let me give you some info. There’s a two-to-three hour long wait in line
at Ticketing to rebook flights. You could try calling the toll-free phone line
to book a flight, but I’m told there’s a five-hour wait to speak with an Agent.
The online app is also not functioning properly, so booking online will be very
difficult.”
Me: “Omigosh… that’s incredible!”
Her: “I know, and I’m very, very sorry about that. I have
some advice for you.” She stopped for a moment, looked around, then continued
softly. “If I was in your place, I’d work right away to book a hotel room near
the airport, because they’re filling up FAST. Give yourselves some space to
breathe, rest up, and try to rebook on the phone or the app from your room in
the morning. At least you’ll have a good place to knock out after all this
turmoil.”
Her advice turned out to be GOLDEN.
At this point I want to be very clear: every single Alaska
Air employee we encountered at SeaTac was exemplary in how they managed an
awful situation, one that happens far too often these days. They were helpful
to a fault, upbeat and friendly, and never once lost their cool when confronted
by anxious and upset travelers. Even the Agents in Baggage Claim, where a tsunami
of tired travelers and luggage washed over the place, were patient,
understanding and empathetic to a fault. They all deserve raises!!
Once we decided to follow the Agent’s advice, we found an
open seat for The Artist to rest while I called around for a hotel room. I was
almost able to book a room at the Airport Hilton, but the phone agent said the
room literally disappeared from her screen as we were finalizing the charges,
and there were no others rooms available at that location. She offered to find
us another hotel among the few that still had rooms and was able to book us
into the Ramada, about three minutes from the airport.
We exited the Terminal, jumped onto the Ramada shuttle, and
in a few scant minutes were standing in the hotel lobby. When Lobby clerk Jordan
heard about our escapades, he said, “I’ve been working here since 2019, and
although I don’t want to jinx anything, every year around Halloween there’s a
huge ground stop at SeaTac airport. It’s kind of weird how it keeps happening!”
The hotel was sketchy, but the room was clean and
well-appointed, with a coffee maker and a fridge and a big, beautiful bed.
While The Artist got situated, I went downstairs to rustle up some grub. The
small restaurant next to the lobby was already closed. The vending machines
were out of bottled water, and the closest thing to actual nutrition I found
was a Grandma’s chocolate brownie cookie that turned out to be excellent! The
hallways on the first and second floors reeked of weed.
Back in the room, while munching on vending machine cookie,
freeze-dried Boise peaches and some nut mix we brought with us, we tried to
rebook online and on the phone. The five-hour wait on the phone was still in
effect, and the online app wouldn’t allow us to book anything for the next day.
I said ”FUCK THIS!”, logged onto
Expedia.com and within 10 minutes had us booked on a Southwest flight leaving
at 1pm the next day, connecting through San Jose and on to Santa Ana.
SUCCESS!!!
Picture this: two hours earlier, we were stuck in the SeaTac
baggage Claim area with no luggage, no flight tickets and no hotel. Now, we
were lounging on our hotel room bed, bags opened, clothing arrayed, sipping on
a couple of Heinekens and rejoicing our newly booked flights home. How quickly
the Wyrm turned!
The three-hour flight from Seattle to San Jose was fine. There
were small babies on three sides of us in the cabin, but they were mostly OK.
The flight from San Jose to Santa Ana included an eight-week-old puppy in a
carrier one row behind us, but Mom had given her a Doggie Downer before the
flight, which the rest of us really appreciated. By 6pm we’d landed in The OC,
had shuttled to the car in the offsite parking lot and began the trek home,
stopping only to grab some Orange Chicken and fried rice for our ‘welcome home’
dinner.
This journey gave us a number of new insights regarding
modern air travel.
Why don’t they have seating in the Baggage Claim area?
Surely the airlines know people have to wait for their luggage to appear, so
why make them all stand? Some of us are
Olds, right?
How is it that every flight is now ‘completely full-up’ as
Gate Agents like to say. I remember not too many years ago there were ALWAYS
open seats, so it’s obvious the flights are being overbooked to maximize profits.
At all five Boarding gates on this trip, the Agents made announcements asking
for volunteers to give up their seat for cash and prizes.
Loading and unloading passengers has become a royal pain in
the ass. Why? Carry-on luggage use has skyrocketed because airlines are now
charging passengers to check baggage, which means more people than ever are
opting for carry-ons. This slows the process of getting in and out of the plane
to a crawl while people stop to try and stash their bag up into the storage or
try to find it and pull it down out of storage. We’ve all been through it.
Airlines should instead wave all fees for checked bags and
charge a fee for carry-on bags (not the ubiquitous personal item), which
would incentivize passengers to avoid the charge to bring their luggage aboard
unless they really REALLY need to have it with them. Decreasing the number of
carry-on bags will dramatically reduce the time wasted while loading and
unloading the aircraft, allowing better scheduling all around.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, be as friendly, funny
and empathetic as possible towards everyone involved with the airline travel
process. Ticket Agents, TSA workers, Gate Agents, concession staffers, baggage
handlers, janitors, shuttle drivers… ALL of them. They, like police officers,
are forced to deal with the worst kind of human beings you can imagine, all day
and every day. Watch a TSA worker smile big when you say “Good Morning, nice
shoes!” You may have been the first person to acknowledge their humanity that
day, and that (as Martha Stewart says) is a GOOD THING.
“The key to a better life: Complain less, appreciate more. Whine less, laugh more. Talk less, listen more. Want less, give more. Hate less, love more. Scold less, praise more. Fear less, hope more.” - Michael Josephson… philosopher, attorney, writer
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