Last Thursday I arose at 4:00 a.m. in a hotel in Nashville, TN, to catch a 6:00 a.m. flight to Dallas. I distinctly remember thinking, “Well, I’m just going to Dallas and will return late this afternoon. I surely don’t need hat, gloves or overcoat to go to Dallas.”
Do any of you remember what happened in Dallas on Thursday, February 11? It snowed—hard—in Dallas all day and for all I know that night. It snowed great, fluffy flakes at a near-blizzard rate without letup.
At 3:00 p.m. my meeting (with the nice folks at Turbine Aircraft Services, Inc.) was over and I returned to DFW to fly back to Nashville. My flight was canceled, but, no sweat, American had already rebooked me on a later flight. We boarded that flight only a half-hour late, which I figured was pretty good for a Texas airport on a snowy day.
Then it took three and a half hours to get the airplane deiced. The entire planeload of passengers clapped and cheered as the wheels left the ground.
The interesting thing is that nobody on the plane seemed mad or even irritated. All in all, we were a pleasant group. Nobody was snarling. I’ve thought a lot about that. How did American pull that off? In the first place, we all knew that it was not American’s fault. Nor was DFW to blame. True, deicing took much longer than it would have at a northern airport, but we understood that, too.
Also, the American crew kept us well and frequently informed. The captain began most of his announcements with a deep sigh and words such as, “Well, folks—sigh—it looks like we blew the estimate again.” We got the definite opinion that he was on our side, and doing the best he could.
When I was telling my brother, an infrequent flyer, about the ordeal he said he wouldn’t have put up with it. He would’ve gotten off. Why, he asked, didn’t I get off? Well, I told him, I wanted to go to Nashville.
I think everyone else felt the same way.
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