http://www.freep.com/article/2009122...wait-on-tarmac

Finally. Get these abusers back for their crimes against humanity! [[heh)



Two weeks before September 11th, a United plane I was on from LA to NYC La Guardia was grounded in Buffalo due some odd weather...and since I knew two people on the fabled Northwest Airlines flight that spent nearly 12 hours at Metro [[they now incorrectly say 8) during that huge snowstorm...I recognized the potential trouble, requested the flight crew make accommodations, and perhaps warded off a riot on the plane with an impromptu game of "Who'll play us in the made-for-tv-movie?".

We were on the ground for something like five or six hours, after our previous night's plane had been cancelled due mechanical difficulties [[and they couldn't find another to replace it, at the end of the day...for a plane FULL of red-eyers). MOST of our frustrations were due the poor handling the night before, when they ONLY cancelled the flight because they couldn't legally hold the flight crew any longer...there was NO consideration for the paying passengers one whit.

United couldn't have handled the situation any worse, and if I hadn't forgotten the legal pad with everyone's contact info...and all of their business cards...at my friend's apartment two blocks from the WTC, we'd have filed a huge class-action suit against them. My friend found it all when he was finally able to return to his place a few months later...but by then everyone was pretty happy we were still alive so we passed on punishing United any more than they'd already been.


Without that extraordinary event, though, there was a sure suit. I will never, ever fly United again, even if it ends up being the last airline in the country.


But this new law is way past overdue. There was NO excuse for United not being able to get a stairway to the plane to get us offloaded in Buffalo, nor any reason why they didn't order the bathrooms emptied the moment we knew we weren't going anywhere. It was really amazingly disgusting, and it almost went nuclear until the pilot acquiesced to open the front doors so the smokers could get their nicotine fix.

If my seatmate hadn't been Pamela Anderson's hand and foot double, I'd have had a worse time...but sharing our stories and having a few dozen Pentax employees on board cutting up and documenting everything digitally...then finally sharing cell phones for those who were without...made it bearable...

...and bound us together so the airline couldn't divide and conquer us when we finally arrived. It almost got ugly at La Guardia, the airport police were all around expecting a riot. I cannot remember ever being more angry in my life.


Wow...sorry for the run-on...this obviously hit a nerve.


Now, when we see how quickly the airlines accommodate these new rules, we'll see how they've been lying to us all these years of extreme tarmac abuse.


Cheers, boy was that cathartic. I feel like a new man. I still want my $27,500 from United, though. Retroactive, with interest.