It was the spring of 2024 when I went to Asheville, North Carolina for the Enterprise Wireless Association (EWA) board meeting. There are no direct flights from Los Angeles to Asheville, so I had to schedule a flight with a connecting flight which I typically try very hard to avoid due to the numerous problems associated with connecting flights.
It was Monday, May 21st when I had to pack my bag for 2 days in North Carolina. My flight was scheduled for a 7:30AM departure which meant that I had to be up at 4AM and be ready by 5AM to be picked up. José showed up a few minutes to 5AM and we were off to the airport on time. Traffic was minimal until we arrived inside the airport at which point the traffic became noticeable, but not a problem. He dropped me off at Terminal 4 for American Airlines. I checked in and quickly went through security with the normal hassle associated with airline travel. However, instead of being assigned one of the local gates, I was scheduled to leave from gate 132 which is in the Tom Bradley International Terminal. I kept walking for a long time to get over to the terminal in the closed in walkway behind security. The walkway took me through the International Terminal and dumped me into the concourse with the gates inside the TSA checkpoint for security so I did not have to go through it a second time. However, once there, the gate that I was assigned was another significant walk to the gate. Eventually I arrived at the gate which then gave me time to get a cup of coffee and relax for 30 minutes before it was time to board the flight. Things seemed to be going smoothly which was unexpected and a pleasant surprise.
I boarded the plane and quickly arrived at my seat about two thirds of the way to the back of the plane. I took my aisle seat and eventually found out that no one was sitting in the middle seat which made for a comfortable ride to Dallas where I had to meet my connecting flight. After the usual instructions from the cabin crew, we took off from LAX on time while heading west as we were quickly ascending to the proper altitude. The plane made a 180 degree turn to head east towards Dallas, Texas at which time I thought it would be a good time to turn on a movie to pass the time. However, the planes in the American Airlines fleet do not have movie screens or any way to view movies without using the cell phone as your entertainment center. I have never streamed a movie or TV show on my phone, nor do I have a Bluetooth headset so after spending a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to watch a movie on the plane, I realized that I could not watch it without disturbing everyone around me since I did not have any type of headset for my phone. At this point, I decided it was time to go to sleep. I spent most of the flight dozing and waking up which made the additional sleep almost worthless. Eventually, we arrived in the Dallas area so the plane was properly secured for the landing. We taxied over to the terminal and exited the plane into the terminal. Not being very familiar with the Dallas airport, I was looking for signs to help guide me to the correct terminal for my connecting flight. Everything is big in Texas including the airport so I walked and walked and walked until I eventually arrived at a sign directing me to the overhead tram that travels around the airport to the other terminal building where my connecting flight was scheduled to use for its departure.
I got onto the tram and took it to the far side of the airport where the other terminal building was located. Exiting the tram, I found my way down the escalator and eventually over to the gate from which my flight was scheduled to depart. I had a few minutes to grab a sandwich to eat before boarding the plane. After wolfing it down, I boarded the plane and made my way to my aisle seat where I comfortably sat for the balance of the flight. Since this plane was similarly equipped with Wi-Fi for display of the movies through one’s cell phone, I killed time on the plane reading the documents for the upcoming board meeting so that I was fully informed with the facts before arriving in Asheville for the eventual meeting. The flight arrived about 10 minutes early which was very welcome considering I had a time problem that needed to be addressed. The plane arrived at 3:35PM about 10 minutes early. I did not check my bag because I was supposed to attend a party that was scheduled for the board members that had a shuttle bus with a 4:30PM departure from the hotel which was at least 30 minutes away from the airport via taxi. I had not scheduled any ground transportation on the assumption that all I had to do was to go to the taxi stand and get into a taxi. You know the old saying, “the word ass/u/me makes an ass of you and me.” I followed the signs to the taxi area that also had the Uber & Lyft pickups. There I stood with one other person waiting for any of the three modes of transportation in vein as the clock ticked away making my prospect of catching the shuttle bus to the evening party from the hotel get smaller by the minute and eventually fading away. A few people showed up to catch an Uber that they had specifically called themselves, but nothing for myself or the other lady waiting who was constantly on the phone trying to get an Uber or Lyft car to pick her up. After about 25 minutes, a lady from an Uber vehicle got out of her car and announced that she was from Uber and she was looking for a fare to take somewhere as she had not gotten anything from her Uber app in her phone. The lady wanted to head south while Asheville was about 35 minutes north. She was there first, so she was ready to take the Uber when the driver stated that she did not want to head south and preferred to go north to Asheville due to her personal preference so I got into the Uber and was finally on my way to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel, handled the payment and proceeded to walk inside the hotel to check in at the front desk. After checking into the hotel, I looked around and found some people from the EWA board who informed me that the shuttle was being delayed due to others that also had flights arriving later in the day. They indicated that I had time to go to my room and drop my luggage before heading to the shuttle bus. This is a large hotel with an unusual layout so finding the room turned out to be a bit challenging. I had to walk through the lobby of the Vanderbilt wing of the hotel where some meeting rooms were located and a large contingency of financial consultants were having a symposium. I did not realize that I had to walk through their social gathering to get to the elevator and eventually to my room thinking that I missed the elevators, so I turned around and went back towards the lobby. I stopped and asked one of the employees when I was almost back to the lobby and he informed me that I had been going the right way but had not gone far enough. Now I headed back towards the elevators again wiggling my way though the crown and eventually to my room. I dropped my carry on bag and my laptop, and then proceeded back to the lobby. After arriving back at the lobby level, the crowd was gone as their break was over and they were now back inside the meeting room instead of being out in the foyer for refreshments and socializing thus making my return to the lobby easier than my trip to the room. Upon arrival in the lobby, the people from EWA were gone so I figured that the shuttle bus was out front of the hotel. I was wrong, so I went back inside and started asking where I would find the shuttle bus. I tried multiple hotel employees to get a different answer from each one thus making it more difficult for me to find the shuttle. I went back out front and looked around to see if I could spot the shuttle bus somewhere around the sides from the front entrance, but to no avail. So now I had to start evaluating the different answers that I received from the hotel employees. I decided to head around to the left and down that hill as it seemed like the most likely answer to be the correct one. To my surprise, the shuttle bus was there down the hill with most of the people already on the bus. I was one of the last to get on the shuttle bus, but I made it in time before its departure.
After a 30 minute drive to the home of the gentleman from Anterix hosting the cocktail party, we arrived at the bottom of the driveway for his home. He lives in a hilly area and the shuttle bus had a lot of trouble maneuvering the streets and climbing the steep streets to the house. The bottom of the driveway where the bus was parked was about 100 feet below the house with a very steep driveway. The host provided a SUV as a shuttle to take some of the people up the hill while the rest of us hoofed it up the driveway for a real workout so after being greeted at the front door by our host and hostess, we entered their beautiful residence with a fabulous view over the city. The food and drink was top notch and everyone had a great time. So after the party was over, we reversed the process to get back to the bus getting a second round of exercise walking down the steep driveway while attempting not to trip or fall. We then headed back to the hotel where we proceeded to congregate in one of the pubs off the side of the lobby where we continued to visit, eat and drink. Eventually, we were done for the evening and we all returned to our respective hotel rooms and went down for the count.
The board meeting was successful and informative. New strategies were discussed for the future of the organization to stay on top of the latest technology and decisions were made. We had our official board dinner Wednesday evening and finished the board meeting Thursday morning by 11AM. This gave me time to get back to my room to gather my bags, head back to the lobby, check out at the front desk and grab the Uber back to the airport. I had taken the phone number of the Uber driver from the other day and had arranged for her to pick me up at the hotel and take me back to the airport.
Arriving back at the airport by 12:45PM for my 2:35PM flight gave me plenty of time to get through security, grab something to eat and relax at the gate. There were several of the board members at the airport waiting for their flights with at least one other board member planning to take the same flight in which I was booked. Asheville is a small airport, so getting through security is a lot easier and simpler than at my departure from LAX. So now I was sitting at the gate waiting for my flight at 2:35PM to depart when at about 1:45PM, the flight monitor indicated that the flight was delayed about 20 minutes. That did not seem to be a big deal since I had sufficient time to make my connecting flight. My return schedule was to take a 45 minute flight to Charlotte, North Carolina and take the 5:15PM flight from Charlotte to Los Angeles. This would make the layover time a little thinner, but did not put the connecting flight into jeopardy of being missed. We waited patiently for our plane to arrive as it was running late, but soon the gate agent spoke over the intercom to inform us that the problems had multiplied. One of the flight attendants had called in sick. They assumed that the flight attendant in the arriving plane would take the place of the sick attendant, but that was not in the cards. This meant that they could not load the plane and depart until they found another person to replace the sick flight attendant. They continued to search for a replacement flight attendant, but to no avail so eventually, they announced that the flight would not take off until 5PM. This meant that I would miss my connecting flight in Charlotte, so it had to be rescheduled.
I got into line at the gate to reschedule my connecting flight. I waited about 1:15 minutes to get to the front of the line at which point I got my connecting flight changed to 7:30 PM, the last flight out of Charlotte that day heading to Los Angeles. It was the best that I could do at the time.
I sat down to wait for the plane to arrive and for them to start boarding the plane. Our original plane had been sent away to clear space for other planes that were scheduled to use the same gate. I am not sure what they did with the plane. I was fairly certain that they were unable to use the George Jetson solution of pushing a button and having the vehicle fold up into an attaché case which could be carried by hand so that it could be placed out of the way until needed. Therefore, they had to use some storage space or send the plane out to its next destination to keep the consequences of the delayed flight to a minimum. From my perspective, it did not matter if we eventually boarded the same airplane or it was a different one as long as there was one available once we were able to take off from Asheville.
Time dragged on and as the clock approached the 5 o’clock hour, there was a foreboding feeling that we were going to suffer additional delays. Announcements that would give us the warm and fuzzy feeling that we were about to be rescued were non-existent and announcements that made us feel like things were still not going according to plan were routinely present. So impatiently we waited and waited and waited until eventually the announcement came that we were delayed further and that we would not be taking off until 7:15PM. This meant that I would miss my connecting flight unless it was also delayed for some reason which was not expected, but we could always hope for it to occur. In any case, we had to wait until 6:15pm to hear that the flight was now scheduled for the 7:15PM takeoff, but when 6:45PM arrived, we still were not boarding the airplane. Eventually at 7:15PM they announced that the replacement flight was boarding and we were ready to take off at 7:45PM, but the air traffic controller had us sitting on the tarmac for another 15 minutes before we were allowed to take off around 8PM.
The flight to Charlotte was uneventful once we were able to take off while we were in the air. However, the entire pattern of delays started up again once we reached the Charlotte airport where we went through a series of taxiing from the runway, then waiting for other airplanes to get out of our way that were supposed to cross our path on our way to the terminal. We would pull over and stop, wait for 5-10 minutes for a plane to cross and then continue towards the terminal where we had to stop again. From the time that we landed around 8:20PM, we took approximately one hour and forty minutes to reach the terminal. We were sitting for 25 minutes at one point being told that there wasn’t a gate available for us while they tried to find a gate that we could use. By 10:00PM, we were finally at the gate and started the process of emptying the plane and since I was near the back of the plane, it seemed to take forever. As soon as I got out of the jet way into the terminal, I immediately went to the gate agent to verify that my connecting flight (of which I had little hope that it was still there) had already left and wanted to know what was going to happen at this point in time. I was informed that they could not help me at the gate and that I had to walk down the terminal building until I reached the “Customer Service” desk that was about a 7 minute walk from my location. Once located, I had to stand in line for about 10 minutes before an agent was able to assist me in handling my problem.
I was told that I would have to stay over night and that the first flight out of Charlotte to Los Angeles was at 7:00AM. They gave me a $12 voucher for a meal at the airport which was insufficient to purchase most anything that resembled a meal and another voucher to stay the night at a nearby hotel that was about 5 minutes away from the airport. Since it was after 10PM, most everything was closed and I had to eat at the local Italian fast food place which limited me to a single slice of pizza or a Stromboli to be close to the budget of $12 on the voucher. I got that to go and then want to the transportation area to catch the shuttle to the hotel. I waited another 25 minutes for that shuttle so I arrived and checked into the hotel at 11:30PM and soon thereafter I was able to get into my room and go to sleep. My baggage had been checked through to LA and I was unable to retrieve them at the airport, so I want back down to the front desk to obtain a toothbrush and some toothpaste. Back in the room, I brushed my teeth and went to sleep around midnight to be awakened at 4:30AM from the wakeup call I had placed with the front desk.
I needed to take the 5:00AM shuttle back to the airport so that I could get onto the airplane which was scheduled to leave at 7:00AM. After the usual hassle going through security at the airport, I sat and waited for the airplane to start boarding around 6:25AM. I got onto the airplane. I still had by laptop computer in a carry-on bag, so I had to do the usual removal of the computer from the carry bag and put it through the X-ray machine along with everything from my pockets being placed in the tray. To add insult to injury, the TSA decided that my laptop was suspicious so they carefully wiped down my laptop with a paper cloth which was inserted into a machine to determine if I had been handling any explosives or gun powder. I had been to a target practice range a week prior to the flight, but I had not taken my computer there. However, I had typed on my computer 2-3 days after being at the range, so there must have been some tiny trace of the gun powder residue on my hands when I used my computer which set them off on a mission to find something with me. However, it led to a dead end and I was eventually allowed to continue through security and sit at my gate waiting for the airplane to start boarding.
The airplane took off on time at 7:00AM as we headed for the sky. It was nice to be in the air and heading home from my extended stay in the airport, an adventure that I do not recommend to anyone. I was tired on the airplane and actually managed to close my eyes and doze off for a few minutes at a time before waking up to find that my neck hurt from my head hanging down. This cycle repeated itself several times until we landed at LAX around 9:15AM on Friday morning. I still had to notify the person who was going to pick me up, get off the plane, walk to baggage claim and hope that my luggage was there for me to pick up. To my delight, it was there right where it was supposed to be and after retrieving it I headed to the curb where I waited about 5 minutes for my ride to arrive to take me home. I had not taken my house key, so she had to let me into the house so that I could get my keys, change clothes and head to work. I got to the office around 11AM which is only 3 hours late to work considering the ordeal that I had been put through.
I am not sure that I will be going back to Asheville any time in the near future.