Neal Rubin missed his high school reunion in Colorado, but had a Delta Airlines experience so memorable it makes for a zany Detroit News column anyhow.
The Farmington Hills journalist and a planeload of others endured "a waste of an entire day," as he puts it.
We were right back where we started, no place worth being, trying to remember why we used to think flying was fun. . . .
It was seven hours after we were supposed to lift off for Denver on Friday, one hour after a gate agent had simply fled the scene.
The News columnist's flight, if that's the right word, began and ended at the same place -- the airline's Detroit Metro terminal.
A series of setbacks escalated after a runway change and repeated taxiing.
We’d already spent so much time following Moses across the tarmac, we didn’t have enough fuel for the trip. That's how we wound up back in the terminal. . . .
Pilots can be on duty for a maximum of 16 hours in a day. Our pair timed out; after the delay for refueling, they would have been over the limit by the time we touched down in Denver.Fortunately, Delta was able to call in relief pilots. Unfortunately, we’d lost one of our four flight attendants by the time they showed up. Even more unfortunately, while we were waiting for the fourth, the first three timed out.
That’s when the airline said to heck with it and canceled the flight. It was 8:25 p.m., eight hours after we were scheduled to start soaring toward my reunion.
As for his luggage . . . yes, it has a tale of its own at the link below -- where Rubin also salutes the only Delta employee he met Friday who deserves praise.
