Flying Used to Be Fun

This is post 1 regarding my weekend trip to Rockport, TX and the Rockport Gospel Music Festival. I’ll deal with all the fun stuff and pictures from Rockport in the next post, but in this post I’ll just give you the gory details about our flights.

This is our 9th annual trip to Rockport, and in the eight previous years we always flew American Airlines. In all those years American never delayed us more than a little bit, and we never had serious schedule problems, including 2002 when we flew to Texas, then up to Oklahoma, and then back home – six flights in all and not a single problem. Given that this was right after 9/11 and all the new security procedures, it was pretty amazing.

As I was planning for this year’s trip and was comparing fares, American was nearly $125 per ticket higher than Continental, so I decided we’d go Continental this time…to my regret. Continental has become somewhat of a discount airline and for good reason. They take “no-frills” to a new level. On American the seating was a little tight, but still okay, and there was in-flight entertainment in the form of cabin TV’s which showed various fare from CBS as well as the in-flight audio selections. Continental’s in-flight entertainment consists of spitting on the head of the person in front of you who just reclined their seat so that the top of their head is less than one foot from your face. No TV, no audio, nothing. My long legs were cramped up against the backrest on their 737-500’s, and there was actually a little more room on the relatively tiny regional jets (or “Barbie Doll Jets” as one pilot called them). I’ve begun to get a whole new appreciation for American.

The first flight gave us a false impression that Continental would be able to get us places on time just like American. We left the gate on schedule and thanks to a stout tailwind, arrived in Houston 30 minutes early. This would give us plenty of time to navigate through the large Houston airport complex. They never read our connecting gate info on the flight (as they do on American), but told us to check with the gate agent that would meet our plane. We got our first good news of the day when we were advised that our 12:55 pm flight to Corpus Christi on Continental Connections (regional parter of Continental) was not going to leave until 3pm. There goes two hours of our day right down the drain.

We ate lunch at the airport and headed back to the gate only to find that the 3pm time had been replaced with 3:41. Another 41 minutes gone, and now our sound check in Rockport was seriously in jeopardy. We were informed that our plane was supposed to come in from Laredo, but was having some mechanical difficulties. We finally were loaded onto a bus and shuttled all of about 200 feet to the plane and then waited…and waited…and waited in the hot, stuffy bus before the bus drove us all back to the terminal. Another mechanical problem. The departure time was now moved to 4:20 pm. Kiss the sound check goodbye.

We finally made it back to the plane and taxied away from the gate at 5pm. At 5:31 I looked down on Rockport as we flew overhead, knowing that it would probably be nearly 7pm before we got back there. We missed our sound check and had to go on cold at 8:00 pm, but the sound guy at the Festival is a pro and he made it work.

Flash forward to Sunday afternoon. This year due to other obligations by some of my group members, we decided to fly home on Sunday night instead of Monday. We were playing with fire because the flight we needed to catch would arrive in Orange County about 20 minutes before the airport closes, and if we were delayed, we’d end up at LAX and on a bus back to Orange County. Because that was the only way to complete our concert obligations in Rockport and still get home that night, we decided to try it.

Our first flight to Houston was scheduled to depart at 7:10 pm. When we arrived at the airport we found out that the time had been moved to 7:40 pm. The gate agent looked very sympathetic when I showed her my connection information, and she pretty much told us we weren’t going to make it. Her words were: “You better run”.

Bottom line – we landed in Houston at 8:30, taxied to the stand where we were supposed to park, and then waited for 7 minutes for the ground crew to show up so we could taxi the last 100 feet to our spot. We entered the terminal building at 8:50 – exactly 5 minutes before our Orange County flight was schedule to depart.

Our connecting gate was clear across the complex and we took the gate agent’s advice and hustled. I knew there was no way we’d make the flight but I wasn’t quite ready to give up. When we arrived at the gate the plane was still there and they were basically waiting for us. We got on the plane, found that our assigned seats were gone, and ended up taking whatever we could, which in my case meant sitting in a middle seat between two strangers. Some fun.

Even though we got on the plane a little after 9:00, this plane also had some mechanical issues and didn’t push back until nearly 9:40. Our date with the curfew in Orange County was looking pretty tenuous.

We did finally get off the ground after an interminable taxi across half of Texas and after an extremely bumpy (and entertainment-free) flight, landed in Orange County at 10:54 pm. That’s waaaay too close for me.

There was some good in the delay in Houston. Had the plane left on time, we wouldn’t have been on it, and even if it had left right after we got on, our luggage probably wouldn’t have got on it. As it was, people and belongings were reunited in the baggage area at John Wayne Airport.

We’ll do a couple of things differently next year. Number one, we’re getting back on American and I don’t care what it costs. Number two, we’re going to stay over until Monday as we have in the past and not try to take late night flights. I’ve had all the fun I can stand.