There’s a perfectly good reason that American Airlines intials are AA and that’s because they break down so much they need the AA to recover them and by the end of your journey you’ll need the other AA to cope with the booze problem you picked up in the 22 lounges you had to wait in whilst they found someone who actually knew how to fix a plane.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We have, for once left Tilly at home and come to the states to see our elderly secret cousins in Florida for a few days. We hadn’t decided to do this until the last minute but had been persuaded by their very kind invitation to power wash their patio, weed their garden and drive their golf cart around the estate recklessly (that was the clincher) where they live in San Destin.
So we booked an AA flight from Heathrow to Charlotte with a connection to Fort Walton. We boarded our Heathrow plane on time and when they tried to start it they found someone had mislaid the crank handle. I did offer to give them a push but we all had to sit in our seats for ages whilst an engineer was found who could fix it.
With that done we then set off on a smooth flight to find that they had forgotten to pack any of the special meal orders, bar 4. The passengers weren’t happy and I was looking right smug as I’d had the foresite to pack two home made cheese rolls and some Salt and Vinegar!
As fate would have it though the two choices of meal the plane actually had included a tomato pasta which was veggie, which I imagine infuriated the hardened meat munchers from Texas on board as they only got chicken.
Our seats were 2 on their own with no third seat and we were mighty relieved we opted to do this as the lady in the seat Infront of us wasn’t really just in her seat as she overflowed into the 2 adjacent seats quite extensively. The poor guy against the window almost had to sit outside, but he did get his revenge by having to use the loo numerous times making the lady have to vacate her seat which was accompanied by a rather loud pop everytime she got up. She really struggled to actually get out too as she was nearly wedged in on all sides by her girth. Needless to say on her meal she left the salad.
We landed about an hour late and numerous passengers then missed their flights but as we had 4 hours before ours we adjourned to the bar where 2 Half’s and one pint were $27! Ouch!
We rolled up at the gate, boarded a bit late as the crew weren’t actually at the right airport by departure time and then we sat there whilst the plane broke down. Again.
The captain called another engineer and he the spent about an hour trying to reverse the polarity on the warp core but in the end gave up and we all had to get off and head to a different gate.
Our new plane arrived and the passengers disembarked, the cleaners cleaned and, now very late, the departure time on the gate TV kept going forwards. In the end the ground staff gave up and admitted that actually they’d broken another plane and if anyone knew the number for easyJet perhaps we could give them a ring for them.
So off we toddled to another gate in the Charlotte airport gate Bingo game and waited for another plane. And waited. And waited.
This eventually turned up and by now our departure time had been changed to ‘Possibly’
The crew looked as baffled as the passengers – who for the most part remained upbeat and resigned to never leaving the airport in a live action remake of Tom Hanks film The Terminal (sponsored by AA), but out of the blue the gates opened and we started to board!
We got on and the crew couldn’t find the right light switch button to dim the lights for takeoff so we had a brief disco whislt they sorted that and then one of the cabin crew announced to us that ‘This plane is a disaster’. I’m sure he meant Airline, anyway we took off and initially banked so much and so low I thought we were heading back as we’d broken another plane, but the pilot, working on the basis that this plane could break at any moment, threw us down the runway and into numerous turns like a spitfire with an ME109 on its tail and we headed to Fort Walton, nearly knocking someones chimney pot off on one of the low turns as we left the runway. It certainly woke you up!
So, we’ve been on 2 planes 3 of which broke down, weird day really and one not to be repeated in a hurry… Now for some jet washing…
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