Thursday, August 20, 2009

Last Exit to Queens

There are flights to Buffalo every two hours or so. Saint Jerome and I put our names on the stand by list for the next flight at 10. No go. We put our name in for the 12 PM flight. No go. The 2, 4, 6, 8 (who do we appreciate? ME ME ME! Goooooooooooooooooooo ME!) flights are all over-booked or over weight or both. Even from the first flight they were looking for volunteers to go on a later flight.

This weight limit thing is something else, especially on a flight to Buffalo. The planes are so tiny (they practically run on rubber bands) and the people flying have so much stuff. No one checks bags anymore due to the surcharges so they carry the maximum amount of bags plus other allowed items including baby carriages and car seats, etc. Not to mention that people are carrying so much more excess weight around their guts, especially to Buffalo. We were appalled to find that if you were unfortunate to be at the tail end of those boarding and the plane has reached its weight limit, you're S O L. We saw this happen on a Buffalo flight and a flight to Burlington, VT where the stranded passengers were told that there was room on the next flight. When is the next flight? 7:30 the next morning! If the overweight couple with the 4 and 6 year old kids didn't each have two bags, plus each kid and a bag PLUS two gigantic car seats, the last two people could have gotten on their flight. Saint Jerome and I were worried about getting on our flight since it was the last flight to Buffalo that day.

We finally boarded and boy did I elbow my way on to that plane. I wasn't going to be stranded overnight. Especially since we were there for about 14 hours! The plane was filthy and smellly but we endured the 50 minute flight, hailed a cab in Buffalo and got to Saint Jerome's sister's house at about 12:30 am. Boy were we tired!

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