Stuck

Gotta break away to address this.

Apparently quite a few folks were stranded on their planes when a storm blew through (like they've been getting hammered this week). Some were stranded for as much as 11 hours. If I was in that situation, I'd be pretty pissed. Particularly if I had the monkies with me. But something you have to understand is where that anger should be directed.

Pilots like to get the mission done. At the same time, they don't like to sit in a cockpit on the ground any more than you like to sit in the back. So when a situation like this happens, it's usually not the call of the crew serving you--they tend to be just as pissed as you are.


There are so many other entities involved here--the company itself is a big one, but the airport drives a lot of what happens. Like when you pull from the gate 100 feet just to sit for 2 hours. The gate that plane is sitting at is likely needed for another plane just minutes after your scheduled takeoff. So, in order to keep things flowing, they order the airline to move the plane. If it happens to be loaded with passengers, then so be it.


I'm not sure what happened in New York. It could have been the airport, it could have been an airline getting schwacked that day (they cancelled around 50% of their flights due to weather), it could have been any number of things. But it wasn't the crew. I'm not a fan of rude stewards and stewardesses (Flight Attendant is a misnomer), who tend to have a high-and-mighty attitude. But it's not their fault if you get stuck somewhere.


So take it easy on them.