My Experience with US Airways

When US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River and everyone on board survived, it reminded me of a story I wrote about a trip my husband Del and I took to South Carolina using them in September 2007.
It started like this:

Del and I drove to the airport in Manchester, NH and I checked my luggage. Del brought a carry on because he didn't want to be bothered with checking a bag.

See, that didn't make any sense to me either. Either way, we were going to be bothered with checked baggage.

We got to the security line and I took off my one shoe because I wear an air cast on the other foot. The lady behind the belt got snippy about it. She was having herself a bad morning and figured she'd take it out on me.

"Where is your other shoe?" She snapped at me as she looked through my bucket of stuff.

"I don't have another shoe." I said.

"Do you have another foot?" She said very sarcastically.

"Yes." I said.

"Then I need your other shoe!" She snapped at me.

"Then you'll have to go to the luggage check because it's in my bag." I snapped back at her.

"I need to see your foot!" She snapped at me again.

I lifted my leg and showed her my cast. "I'm not taking it off." I said.

She obviously didn't have enough coffee that morning and it was giving her a bad attitude. The guy she passed me off too was a lot nicer.

He had a metal stick with a piece of cloth on the end of it. The purpose of this was to make sure that my cast wasn't explosive. Just the thought of my cast exploding made my feet hurt up to my hips.

He knelled down in front of me and said "I'm just going to rub this on your cast but I promise I will do it gently."

"You can do it as hard as you want. I have absolutely no feeling in my cast at all." I said and he laughed that embarrassed 'oh, I hadn't thought of that' laugh.

We got through security and made our way to the newspaper stand where I bought a magazine because of the picture on the cover and Del bought a USA Today. I think he buys that to try and bore himself to sleep.

I touched the outside of the plane before I got on to keep it in the air. I do that every time and so far that has worked like a charm.

We got on and I sat near the window, Del sat in the middle and a little old lady sat on the isle. The plane was nearly empty and she sat next to him. Honestly I think it just made her feel safer to be next to him. She was adorable.

I had taken a Xanax and had very little sleep but I was hungry so I fought the urge to sleep to see what snacks would be offered. The airline employee person (I don't know the PC term for them yet and really don't want to insult anyone unintentionally) even stopped at our isle to ask if we would like a snack.

I have been totally spoiled by other airlines. Because of them I thought the snack would be something I would be required to chew, not a cookie smaller than a dime and thinner than my credit card. I have got more satisfaction from a breath strip than the cookie they offered.

Del and I were making jokes with the little old lady. Maybe that cookie was a warm up for the real snack they had promised - possibly a preview of the snack still yet to come?

As we made jokes I noticed that my foot was pounding. Not really pain, more like my heart had re-located itself into my foot. I am getting older by the minute and gravity has taken over other parts of my body so I thought it was a possibility. I thought maybe this was just another thing nobody ever told me about getting older. Like the hair I found in my chin one day. (And wasn't I pissed about that)

You know what happens to an air-cast at 30,000 feet in the air? The sucker inflates. It becomes its own floatation device. If the pilot decided to have a bad spell and flew the plane over the ocean to crash into it, I would be found floating foot-up.

I leaned over and loosened the straps on my cast. Then I leaned back the 1/8th of an inch that my seat allowed and opened my magazine.

The next thing I knew I was making sucking drool sounds because the plane had landed and apparently I had fallen asleep. It's a good thing it was a nice landing because I wasn't buckled in at all. My magazine was wide open and still in my lap too.

I have never fallen asleep that fast before. It was more like dropping dead suddenly. I didn't even feel it coming on. I didn't have heavy eyes or anything, just *bang* down for the count.

I think US Scareways anticipated that some people do fall asleep before they knew what hit them (maybe they gassed us?) and the teeny-tiny cookie was to prevent a chocking hazard.

That is the nicest thing I'm going to say about them, just so you know.

We said good-bye to our little old lady and got off the plane. We were in North Carolina for our layover and I had been in this airport before. There was a smoking area the last time I was there.

It's gone. The little man we asked about it told us outside to what the he called the 'complementary guest smoking area'.

The 'complementary guest smoking are' is located for your convince across the street from the airport loading zone where the buses and taxi's are doing 80 MPH. If the cigarettes don't kill you, the traffic will. To sum it up, it's an ashtray baking in the sun smack-dab in the middle of a walkway but they give it a fancy name to make you feel special and loved. We were experiencing a 30 degree difference in the weather and my cast wasn't happy about it at all.

I text-message my friend Kimball to warn her about the inflating air-cast thing just in case she ever hurts her foot and needs to travel by plane. I could happen, you never know. People have unplanned foot injuries everyday. I certainly didn't plan on having one.

We finished our smokes and headed back for the security line up. This time when we went through security, they put me in a glass box that was barely big enough to turn around in. I had to stand in there and wait for someone to come along to be sure I wasn't going to take down the plane with my cast.

I've gotten beyond the embarrassment of always being on the list, dragged to the front of the line to be groped in front of strangers by strangers. I've accepted it as part of my flying experience. This was the first time I was ever put into a glass box.

I don't like the glass box.

They forget about you when they put you in the glass box. I don't know how, it's transparent and they could see me cooking inside of it. I felt like one of those rotisserie chickens that you can get in the supermarket.

Maybe that was part of the test? If I didn't explode from the heat and become nothing more than a splatter on the inside of the glass, then it was okay to let me fly?

Seconds before I dropped to the floor of the box (and my entire body wouldn't have fit down there so my face would've been pushed up against the glass which is gross to even think about) two people showed up to let me out.

Now either someone told me or I read somewhere that there is nothing dirtier than the floor of airport security. It is supposed to be dirtier than a men's public restroom toilet at a Red Sox game. I don't know if that is true or not but once I have that kind of information, I can't get rid of it especially if it's gross.

The two people, one lady and one man, tag teamed me. I stepped out of the box and onto the foot print rug and stuck my arms out to the sides because I knew that is what was expected of me.

I think that made me look guilty. It was either that or the sweat pouring off me because of being cooked in the box. I'm not sure but I think these people believed they really had a terrorist on their hands.

The man stood in front of me with his cloth on the end of his stick thing waiting to check my cast for explosives. While he waited, the lady used her wand thing over me several times. Once she was done, she patted me down. Her hand stopped at my side under my arm when she discovered the under-wire of my bra.

I have read many women's concerns about wearing under-wire bra's through airport security. I have always been selected for the 'random security check' (which is bull because they pick me every time so it's not random. I even looked up the word random to make sure it didn't mean every stinking time) and I've never had a problem because of my bra.

For having a cell phone in my back pocket - yes, several times now. But I had never a problem because of my bra.

"Madam, what is this?" She asked.

I couldn't believe the question especially because it was coming from a woman. I glanced at her quickly and confirmed that she did in fact have breasts of her own so I was even more confused that she was asking me that.

"The under-wire of my bra" I said softy because stick man didn't need to know what I was wearing under my shirt.

She didn't believe me. At least I don't think she believed me because she ran her finger along the wire which happened to go....

UNDER MY BOOB!

A normal person would have done something, anything. For instance maybe pulled their arms down to their sides or across their chest or at the very least stepped back in shock. See, there were multiple choices available to me.

Not me. I stood there like an idiot with my arms still out to the sides while this chick fingered the underside...

OF MY BOOB!

Meanwhile "stick man" had started with his cast wipe-down. I was still trying to process the fact that this woman had just got more intimate with me than my husband had that day when "stick man" stood up and told me to put my hands out in front of me, palms up.

This piece of cloth had been on the bottom of my cast where it was rubbed around firmly and extensively. The same cast I was wearing while walking around on the filthy floor through two airports. This piece of cloth went from being rubbed from the bottom of my cast to rubbed on the palms of my hands.

Was this all really happening or did I cook some brain cells in the glass box and I was hallucinating?

Del had been watching this entire thing at the end of the belt where my shoe eventually came out from the x-ray machine. The first thing my germ-a-phobic husband said to me when I limped over to him with my palms still up was "Don't touch me or anything else until you scrub your hands."

My hero. I was about to lick my hands until he said that. He was more upset about the filth on my hands than the fact that some strange woman had recently had her finger...

UNDER MY BOOB!

He dropped my shoe on the floor so I could put it on and I gimped my way to the restroom with my palms facing up so I could spend the next 10 minutes scrubbing my hands.

Actually they are still facing up right now because I'm still not over it. I'm typing with the back of my knuckles. ;)

So, was the cigarette worth going through all that worth it? No, no it wasn't but now I needed another one. I just needed it to burn the flesh off the palms of my hands with it.

Once I was finished scrubbing the flesh from my palms, Del and I made it to our gate where they were getting ready to load the plane.

The question was, could this day get any more traumatic for me?

Why, yes. Yes it could and it did.

Del and I started walking down the ramp and he said that it looked like we would be loading the plane from the tarmac, which was okay because I've done that before. All that meant to me was it was a smaller plane.

My feet, along with the raw palms of my hands, were killing me. I was looking down at my feet while we walked (he walked, I gimped) down the ramp so I wouldn't trip and bust my nose on top of everything else when Del said "Ah, shit. You're not going to like this."

What I saw when I looked up and out the window of the ramp at what Del was looking at totally stopped me in my tracks.

Stopping in my tracks came as a surprise to the guy walking behind me who walked into me and almost knocked me over. He grabbed my arm as I started to lose my balance and I looked at him "Propellers? Does that plane really have propellers on it? Is that the plane they expect us to get on? A plane with propellers on it?"

It did and Del was right. I didn't like that.

I sort of knew propeller planes still existed but I thought they were privately owned and crashed by rich people with nothing better to do with their money. It never, not once, ever occurred to me that a major airline that charges too much for the flights in the first place would still be using such things.

Why did they charge me so much for a flight that obviously doesn't need fuel to fly? Isn't there just some guy that's going to come along and wind up the rubber bands that power the propellers? Are my hard earned dollars going to pay the strongest propeller winding guy? I mean, if that what the case was, I'd be okay with that.

Two of my friends immediately came to mind and if they had let me use my cell phone I would have called them to report the situation to them and see if they felt this was okay. Both of these friends have extensive knowledge of planes and what keeps them in the air, how to fly them and if I should consider taking the bad grey dog (Greyhound) instead.

But they wouldn't let me use my cell phone and my telepathy was on the fritz. Without their words of wisdom and comfort I convinced myself that this time I was going to die. I used both hands to touch the outside of the plane to make double sure it was going to stay up in the air. Even that didn't totally convince me.

Especially when we got into the sardine can they considered a plane. Until that moment I only thought I had been on small planes, I now stand corrected.

Poor Del sat near the window because every time I looked out at the propeller, I had a panic attack. Del's attitude towards flying is warped because as long as he gets to land while inside the plane he doesn't care about how he gets there. I tried to tell myself it was going to be okay if we had to jump out because I was traveling with a qualified expert because he was in the 82^nd Airborne. I even tried to console myself by mentioning it to him and he said "Ah yeah. Do you see a parachute on me anywhere? Did I miss you packing one?"

I felt a little less bad about the fact that his knees were wrapped around his head so he could fit in the seat but it served him right for not going along with my little mind game.

The leather seat in front of me had a huge rip in it. Was it caused by a careless traveler with something metal that hooked on it or by the fingernails of someone who nearly died when the planes propellers stalled?

I was desperately trying to ignore the rip in the seat when I gave myself another panic attack when I couldn't find my seat-belt right away. Was I looking for a seat-belt or a rope to tie around my waist? I wasn't sure.

Okay, everything will be fine if the safety instructions in the pocket of the seat in front of me are written in English and not some foreign language, right?

There was nothing in the pocket of the seat in front of me but a barf bag. Well, at least it was something useful anyway.

I was already scared out of my mind, or so I thought anyway until only one propeller started spinning and the airline employee lady got up to ask passengers to move to different seats.

"What is she doing and why is she doing it?" I asked Del then immediately started asking her "What are you doing and why are you doing it?" because she was the one doing it so she probably knew.

"We need to move people around for weight and balance." She said. When she said it, she was smiling so I figured she was nuts because that isn't something to smile about in my book.

Was she serious? Weight and balance? WEIGHT AND BALANCE?

They were really trying my patience with that crap.

Trivia question: How many Xanax's does it take to knock my butt out?

Answer: Two. But it still takes a couple minutes for it to happen.

I was feeling a little better when the other propeller started to spin and the take off was okay. I had convinced myself that there was a very real chance that we would live through this flight after all - until some clown decided to get up and use the bathroom at the front of the plane.

Oh

my

God!

He's going to put us into a nose dive because he didn't go before we got on the plane. Did he miss the weight and balance discussion? He was risking all of our lives because he drank one too many cokes before boarding. How selfish can one person be? He couldn't wait until we landed? There wasn't a cup somewhere on this plane for him to pee in?

I don't know if it was the shock of seeing the cockpit door open when he opened the bathroom door or if the Xanax kicked in but that's where I guess I passed out because that's the last thing I remember before we landed.

US Scareways. Yup, Lou got that one right. I have never been more scared in my life.

The trip back wasn't much better either. My son Chris brought Del and I to the airport and stood in line with us while we waited to check in. I was playing with my grandson when Del said there were people getting pissed off at the counter and I should be paying attention.

I had the choice of playing with my grandson or watching people getting pissed off. Three guesses what I picked.

It was our turn to go to the counter to find out what was pissing off so many people.

Two things you need to know before I get into that. The first is the date was September 11th, the second is I had taken a Xanax because I thought I was getting on a plane.

Everyone was shocked that I had chosen to fly on September 11th but I figured it's got to be one of the safest days of the year to travel by now, right?

I stepped up to the counter to deal with one of the rudest little (insert descriptive cuss word for a woman of your choice) that I have ever had to deal with. Before I could even say 'hello' she started in with her attitude.

"How many bags?" She snapped at us.

"One." I said and she looked at Del's bag.

"So it that a carry on?" She asked with a 'tude.

"No, it's a ride on. He pulls it and I ride on it. Tons of fun, you should try it." I said trying to make a joke because that's what I do.

She tagged my bag and told me that I could put it on the bus sitting out front of the doors.

"Why would I do that?" I asked.

"Because this isn't a hotel and we don't have bellhops." Miss thing said.

"What? Why is my luggage taking a bus? Is the plane that full?" I asked.

"No. You're not taking a plane, your taking a bus." She said and tried to look over my head to signal the person behind me to come to the counter.

Hold on sweet-cheeks, we aren't done.

"Why am I taking a bus when I bought a plane ticket? I've heard of people being upgraded to first class but never down graded to a bus. What's going on?" I asked her trying to stretch so she couldn't make eye contact with the person behind me and brush me aside so quickly. It was tough to do with a cast on because I couldn't tippy-toe.

"We aren't flying into Philadelphia." She said and called out "Next!"

Here's why I was pissed;

1) I had taken a Xanax and I don't need drugs to ride on a bus. It was a waste of a perfectly good pill and it's considered drug abuse.

2) It was September 11th and this (still your choice of descriptive names) wasn't telling me why we couldn't fly into Philadelphia.

"Hold on a minute. Where is the bus going and if your not flying into Philadelphia is there another airline that is?" I asked. What the hell happened to Philadelphia?

-------

Dear US Airways,

I understand shit happens. Shit happens to me all the time. Here's the thing. If you are going to re-arrange a person's travel plans and treat them like a piece of crap while doing it, you might want to make sure that person isn't friends with hundreds of people who's main thing in common is traveling. You should know that we share this kind of thing with each other.

Just a thought.

Sincerely,

An unhappy, drugged up, bus rider.

P.S By the way, I really don't give a good diddly squat if you don't let me back on your airline. The fact is I'll never travel with you again. There are a bunch of airlines willing to take my money.

P.P.S. Seriously? Propeller planes? Come on!

------

"You have one of two choices, the bus today or a plane tomorrow. As I have already said we aren't flying into Philadelphia so you won't make your connecting flight. Your bag is considered checked so all you have to do is give it to a red cap in North Carolina along with a tip. Have a nice trip." She said sarcastically.

Okay, we were going back to North Carolina airport. Color me happy about that. And if she wanted me to tip anyone, she'd better be handing me over some dollars. I'm not tipping someone because I'm told too.

And I was taking off my bra once we got on the stupid bus. I'm never having my boobs fingered again.

I started making phone calls once we went outside to wait for the bus to get ready to go. I needed to know what the hell happened to Philadelphia. It just happens I know a bunch of people who live in Pennsylvania. We had no idea at that point if it was even still there.

You just don't act that way to people on September 11th. A little explanation was all we needed.

Del and I slept on the bus on the way to NC airport with a lot of pissed off people. We got off and there wasn't a red cap to be found. While everyone else took their checked luggage into the airport to be re-checked because none of us could find a red cap (we had discussed it amongst ourselves), Del and I risked our lives to get to the 'complementary guest smoking area' AKA the ashtray in the walkway where we met other travelers from other airports that took other buses because US Airways sucks.

There was one guy with a wicked southern accent that they were only taking as far as Dallas that night and he was really pissed about that.

I guess he was pissed, I have a hard time with southern.

Del and I went into the airport to hand over my bag when the lady behind the counter got pissed at me because it was already considered checked. "You were supposed to give this to a red cap." She said.

"I couldn't find one." I said.

"Well, you didn't look hard enough." She said and I looked at Del. I didn't realize that red caps are hidden and need to be looked for like a treasure. I didn't get the map with the big red 'red cap here' X on it. Maybe I slept through it?

Was it me? Was I being a problem?

Before I could apologize for uh, not looking hard enough she said "You are only going to be delayed 3 hours. If it was 4 hours we would have given you a meal voucher but it's only 3 hours and that is our policy."

I looked at Del again. "Did I just slip into a coma? Did I ask her for anything and I'm blindly unaware?"

"Nope, this airline only hires the biggest jerks they can find."

I would agree with that but the weight and balance lady on the propeller plane was adorable and I liked her, I just hated the plane.

And if he's not careful, he's going to find himself in the glass box with me. They would probably have him turn his head a cough.

Now a 3 hour delay wouldn't have been that big of a deal if we were going to land at like 5:00PM. We were suppose to land at 11:00PM getting us home around 1:00PM making the next day at work a little rough, but manageable.

Landing at almost 2:00AM and getting home at almost 4:00AM made the next day suck so badly, I can't even think about it without tearing up.

So this is why Del said that he would rather 'drag his testicles through broken glass' than fly US Scareways ever again.

However, now seeing that they can handle an actual emergency, maybe we would give them another chance.

Probably not though.