Flying the Unfriendly Skies, by Dick Hanzelka, 2002

 It started as a good mid-week trip to my first ASCD Executive Council meeting in Washington, D.C. I left for Des Moines from Bettendorf because I was planning to return to Des Moines on Saturday night in time to drive to Grinnell for as least part of Mylene's 40th high school class reunion. The weather was terrific and sunny, and I looked forward to a quick trip to Washington so that I could prepare for the three day meeting I had coming up.

The plane from Des Moines left on time and was delayed a bit in St Louis because of a little rain, but we landed ten minutes before my Washington flight was to take off and the gate was only two away from the one where I had landed--it was one of the few good omens of the travel part of the trip.

We left the gate when we should have---at 1:10 p.m.---and rolled out onto the runway--- the "tarmac" as some people call it. It was then that I decided I never wanted to spend another minute on the tarmac or whatever anybody wants to call it---we spent the next four hours on it inside a hot plane as we waited for "weather on the East Coast to clear." It was hot. It was uncomfortable. It was tense. And after the second hour or so, it began to feel like a hostage situation. Water was running low. People were getting irate. The pilot finally turned on the engines again at about the three hour mark to let a bit of the air- conditioning work its wonders. Of course, had we known that we would never take off, he could have been burning fuel the whole time and kept us cool.

At 5: 1 0, our flight was cancelled and we rolled back to the terminal for an interminable wait in a line waiting to be re-booked. I was strangely calm through all of this mess because I knew there was nothing at all that I or any of the agents could do to change it. The airport in St. Louis became more and more crowded. When I finally made my way to the Service Center desk for my turn, I was put on a 9:00 p.m. flight out of St Louis to Washington. (Of course, originally I should have landed in Washington at 3:47 in the afternoon.)

At 9:00 the flight was delayed until 9:30. At 9:30 it was delayed to 10:20. At 10:20 it was delayed to 10:40. At 10:40 it was delayed for another hour. I knew there was nothing I could do, and that became more obvious when I saw that Tom Vilsack, Governor of Iowa, was waiting for the same plane. I figured if he couldn't have an impact on the situation, no one else could either. We finally did load on to the Washington-bound plane at 12:30 and took off some time after that. We arrived in Washington around 3 :00, and after an unexplainable delay in getting a taxi from the airport, I fell into bed at 3:45 with my alarm set at 6:30 in order to get up for my meetings.

The best part of the three days was the meetings. The group of fifteen of us who make up the Executive Council of ASCD includes people from Hawaii, Israel, California, Massachusetts, Florida, Vermont, Maine, Missouri, and various other places. It is a wonderful working group and the three days went by very fast. In fact, we worked so well that we were able to finish at 12:00 noon on Saturday.

Here was my chance!! I could recover from the problems of the Wednesday flight and get out of Washington early!! The odds were in my favor!! I had suffered at the hands of the airline gods enough!! I called the airline and changed my 6:00 p.m. flight to St. Louis to a 2:55 p.m. flight. I could be back in Grinnell in time for almost the whole reunion!! I thought about calling Mylene and telling her the good news, but then I realized that I was dealing with airlines here and thought better of it.

Twenty minutes later, my caution was rewarded. The representative at the gate informed us that the 2:55 flight which was coming from St. Louis had encountered “mechanical problems" and had to land in Indianapolis. (I later found out from a passenger who was talking on a cell phone to a person who was on the "Indianapolis" flight that fire trucks had followed the plane to the terminal.)

We were told that it was unlikely that the 2:55 flight would make it and that we should go back to the front desk and get a voucher for a taxi to take us to Baltimore for a 3:05 flight. It was 1:45 and I thought that might be possible. But, by the time the line got to me, it was 2:05, and when I asked the clerk about making it to Baltimore in time for a 3 :05 flight she said it couldn't be done. I shared my twelve hour ordeal with her briefly, and she must have taken pity on me because when she gave me my boarding passes for my original 6:00 p.m. flight, she had put me in first class. I thought perhaps that was an omen of good things to come.

But alas, my difficulties were not ended yet. The 6:00 flight didn't leave until 8:00 p.m. which meant I didn't get to St. Louis until 9:30 which meant I missed my flight to Des Moines which meant I was put up in a hotel by TW A for the night. The next flight to Des Moines was at 11:25 on Sunday morning. I finally reached Des Moines about 12:30 and saw members of my family about 3:30 that afternoon for a late and abbreviated Fathers' Day celebration.

It was the very best thing I could have done to put the trip behind me.

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