Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Jet Blue Made Me Green

So, like a savvy traveler, I hustled my girlfriend to the Long Beach Airport early, thus saving an extra day's worth of rental car charges and making an earlier flight back to NYC. Alas, as stated here before on this blog, no good deed goes unpunished.

Our flight hit a lot of turbulence. Now when I say turbulence, I mean the kind that makes you puke and think you're going to die. After circling JFK for 20+ minutes, we attempted to land in the middle of severe thunderstorms and succeeded only in terrifying the entire passenger population, having to break off the attempt and fly out of harms way; that'd be to Stewart Airforce Base in Newburgh, NY. After revisiting the meal that Jet Blue didn't serve us, I asked that we be let off the plane (and was supported by other beleagured passengers). I wasn't keen on taking flight in stormy weather any time soon. I thought: spend the night in upstate New York recuperating from the ordeal and take Amtrak to NYC in the morning, right? Not happening, as our incredibly-out-of-touch-bordering-on-rude crew informed me. (BTW - they were out-of-touch and rude before the whole "we're going down!" incident.) Stewart AFB was not equipped to de-plane passengers and there were more detoured planes touching down by the minute. So, what to do? Refuel and try to land back at JFK, apparently. Which is what we did.



Guess what? The gate where we arrived was just a trailer, so they bussed us to the Jet Blue terminal to retrieve our baggage - but there was an entire plane of queasy, tired, pissed-off folks and only one tiny bus making lots of trips. Strapping young men butted in front of women with children and the elderly. Everyone was so ready to get the hell outa' there.

Did I mention we flew into Queens, which was omninously dark due to electrical outages across the borough, thus making the AirTrain or subway an impossibility?

And who could forget the crying baby in front of our seat? The really bad "jokes" the head flight attendant kept telling over the loudspeaker, making us feel like prisoners in a maniacal comedy club? The airport ground crew member wearing a t-shirt depicting an suicide bomber's aftermath with the subtitle "You want to start a war?" Watching the trailer for Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" on the Direct TV at our seats - over and over and over again?

Bad travel day. Sit. Paw. BAD travel day.