Falling Into Bed

[kevin_standlee]

After a brief panic where my laptop refused to turn off (so I had to do a hard power-down; no apparent lasting harm), my slightly delayed flight to Seattle was without incident. This was the first time I recall flying one of Horizon's smaller planes (a Q200). Due to the tight connection at Seattle, I was glad that I was in row 2. When we got to Seattle, I hustled into the airport, only to discover that my flight to Oakland was delayed until at least 9:40 PM. Sigh.

Well, at least I did have time to have dinner. I walked down to the food court and had a bowl of pasta, then back to my gate. I would have liked to have gone for a walk around the airport, but it seemed imprudent to get too far from the gate as the revised flight time approached. We eventually departed slightly after 10 PM. Sigh again. The point of this detour to Seattle was to avoid a delayed 10 PM departure from Portland.

(And my blood sugar was 176 an hour after eating on account of not being able to exercise at all.)

The upshot was that had I stuck with my original flight, I would have arrived at Oakland at 11:43, nine minutes before the Seattle flight. I wonder if I'll get extra Mileage Plan miles for the detour.

I had been concerned about not being able to make the last BART train of the night -- including the AirBART bus from the airport to the station. Cheryl was kind enough to drive up to OAK and rescue me from a $75 shuttle bus ride. With my flight coming second, it took a lot longer than usual for my luggage, and I certainly would not have been able to get from the airport to BART in time to catch the last train. As it was, we didn't get home until after 1 AM, and I fell into bed shortly afterwards.

I'm sure glad that I'm working from home today.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

My experiences with situations like this are minimal, but unless the delay is clearly due to an equipment problem only, I tend to avoid trying to do end runs around delays, on suspicion that the delay will affect other flights as well. It usually does.