Having survived the ritual humiliation of getting felt up by the butch female security guard, I now had to face the gut-wrenching wait for the muppets to announce which gate my flight would be leaving from. I hate this part because they usually only post up the gate number about 20 minutes before the plane is scheduled to leave, and then everyone rushes down to the gate and you end up standing there for ages and every time I swear to myself that I'm not going to do it, that this time I'm not going to run down there like a lunatic, and then every time I panic and think "If I don't run to Gate 11 this very minute, the plane will take off without me." Of course, it never does.
And then you spend the next forty minutes trying to surreptitiously shuffle closer and closer to the desk where they check your tickets so that you'll be the first on the plane as if it was some sort of prize; as if spending half an hour longer sitting in that cramped metal tube waiting for the rest of the morons to board was some sort of goal that leads to inner enlightenment once achieved.
Anyway, they announced the gate, and I dutifully trundled along with my fellow passengers. Luckily there weren't too many taking this flight, so there were plenty of seats to spare. The flight wasn't due to board for another five minutes or so, so I took a seat. And waited. And I waited a bit more. I took out my book and started distractedly flicking through it, thinking there's no point in getting stuck into it, as we'll be boarding any time soon.
Aaaaaaaaaany minute now.
Oooh! There's the trolley dolly, I mean, air hostess. We must be boarding soon.
Then I looked out the window and noticed that there was no airplane. And my heart sank. I understand that if you're going to pay budget prices for your flights then you have to expect budget services. But I am shit sick of waiting for the damn plane to show up. This seems to happen every time I fly on a low budget airline. And it's not as if the tickets are that cheap either! I was only flying to Southampton, but it still cost me (well, the company) almost £150. I'm tired of budget airlines thinking they can treat passengers like cattle just because we refuse to pay astronomical prices for the privilege of being given an actual seat number with a bigger airline. If your don't have the fleet numbers to be able to provide airplanes at the allotted time, then change your fucking timetable. If you only have three airplanes, and you're offering ten flights a day between London and Paris, then you really need to rethink your business plan.
Anyway, the trolley dolly announced that they were still waiting for the plane (duh) as it had been late taking off from its previous destination, and there would be a 15-minute delay (yeah right) and that they apologise sincerely for any inconvenience this might cause (uh huh, sure).
Then my boss arrived. I prayed to all the gods I could think of that, just this one time, they would grant me super-chameleon powers so I could blend in with the awful upholstery of the chair I was sitting on, so that he wouldn't see me and he'd walk on by. The gods did not look favourably upon me (I don't blame them, really. I'm not a very nice person). He came over and sat right beside me and, whilst trying to block out his noise, I stared daggers at the trolley dolly in a vain attempt to let her know that this is all her fault and, come judgment day, she'll be first against the wall.
The plane eventually arrived, only forty minutes after we were supposed to actually depart, which was about five minutes before we were due to land in Southampton, had everything gone to plan. We had to wait another twenty minutes or so for the arriving passengers to get off the plane, then for the pilot to have his regulation cup of tea, then for the throwers, I mean, 'baggage handlers' to load the luggage onto the plane, and then we were allowed to board.
When we were all settled and seat-buckled in, the pilot made an announcement over the PA, apologising for the delay but saying that it was due to a technical fault before they took off in Southampton. He then proceeded to describe said fault, in almost excruciating detail, which I find completely unnecessary. Again, this is something I find completely irrational in the wake of 9/11. Before the terrorist attacks in the USA, pilots would never discuss this kind of stuff.
They'd never tell you that the reason they were late taking off is because they had no power on the plane when they were on the ground in Southampton because they couldn't find a power cable to go into the ground and therefore couldn't switch the engines on, and when someone eventually found the power cable, they then realised that they had an electrical fault with some of the equipment in the cockpit and they had to wait for someone to find an engineer to take a look at it, and then when the engineer arrived he had to go off again to find some part to fix the problem. And all this had made them late taking off.
No, the pilot would never have told you that. He would have said that some passenger was too pissed to board, so they'd chucked him off and had to wait to find his bags in the cargo hold before they could depart. That's a nice, comfortable, safe lie.
This era of FTMFI (that's 'far too much fucking information' for those of you who don't deal in acronyms) is starting to carry over into other industries too. A few weeks ago, I was on the train to London and we had to stop for half an hour whilst the driver explained in minute detail why he couldn't continue on the track because someone had thrown something onto it, and then explained all the possible accident scenarios that could have happened, had he not stopped in time in front of this obstruction.
And I know why they do it too. They're just trying to pass the buck. They're ensuring that people know it's not their fault that the plane/train/whatever is late departing. They're doing all they can. In fact, if they could, they'd just pile everyone into their own car and drive us to our destination; that's how nice the pilot/driver is. But, you know, company regulations, blah blah blah. So, instead, here's a whole lot of technical info which proves that I'm not making this up and the situation really is out of my hands.
But, all that does is make me wonder, well, even if they do find a power cable and plug the plane in so he can start the engines, what happens when we take off? Is the cable long enough to make it to Southampton? How can they make power cables that long? What happens if it snaps? Or comes out of the ground? Is the pilot planning on freewheeling it all the way to the other end of the country? Those are not things I want to think about on an airplane. Neither do I want to start thinking about the 'real' electrical problems they're having in the cockpit (i.e., that the co-pilot has spilt her coffee all over the dials and they're currently arguing about the best way to remove it), and how that might possibly affect the functioning of the plane.
Too much information. We don't need it. Stop telling us that kind of stuff.
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