camera shy and headed into the woods. Still, when you are bear bait, the last thing you need is a bear. —S.B.
And United Breaks Guitars I don’t like flying. Well, let me amend that. Flying certainly gets you where you need to be quickly, saving time for actual railfanning at your destination. But the airport experi- ence frankly stinks, and even the in-plane experience is barely tolerable. When I fly, I usually go via Southwest. The
free checked bags are a huge part of that, but the flight attendants are generally more fun and the boarding process is far more civilized than on other airlines. Unfortunately, for two recent trips I wound up on United and the experience on both was awful. Granted, some of it was not United’s fault but it seems like things just don’t go right for whatever reason when I fly with them. The first trip was to Winnipeg, flying out of Philadelphia and connecting through O’Hare in Chicago. George Pitarys was flying out of Manchester, N.H., and would meet my brother Bruce and me at Chicago for the same flight to Winnipeg (more on the railfan- ning part of this trip in next month’s issue). First George calls and says his flight out of Manchester was late and he’d probably miss the connection. Then our flight is late leaving Philly. We get to O’Hare to find George al- ready there and our plane to Winnipeg not yet at the gate. At least we’ll be sticking with our original schedule (somewhat). Once in the air to Winnipeg we’re about an hour and 15 minutes into a flight that’s a bit less than two hours when the pilot comes on the PA. “I’m the last person you want to hear from,” he says, “but the plane has developed a hydraulic problem and we’re heading back to Chicago.” He assured us it wasn’t a safety issue, but back to Chicago we went. After an hour on the ground, we finally leave again (in the same plane), now five hours late. We get to Winnipeg and only have time to track down one train on our trip’s first day. For the return trip, George took an early and uneventful flight home. Bruce and I had an afternoon flight, and just as we’re ready to pack up and head to the Winnipeg airport
United calls and says our flight is delayed by 30 minutes. Cool. We have an extra half hour of railfanning in Winnipeg, which we put to good use by getting two more trains, one with a set of Canadian Pacific SD40-2s on the point (they used to be everywhere; now getting a set is kind of cool).
Getting to the airport we discover that the courtesy call didn’t mean we could get to the airport 30 minutes later. In retrospect, we’re not sure what it meant. But apparently we still needed to be at the airport at least an hour ahead of the scheduled time and the United counter was closed. After scrambling around, an agent was finally found and we got on the plane with minutes to spare. We still don’t know why United bothered to call. With all this drama behind me, I still
needed to fly United again less than a month later. Going to Alaska, United had the best prices and the best connections (from La Guardia through Denver to Fairbanks and back from Anchorage, also through Denver). This time I was traveling with Emily Moser and we get to La Guardia where the first cri- sis hits. We have the dreaded zone five boarding, which means most of the overhead bins are going to be full by the time we board. Sure enough, we get to the jetway and they say there is no room for my camera bag on the plane and it has to be checked. I promptly refuse; United’s baggage handlers are not known for their careful care of other people’s stuff (look up the song “United Breaks Guitars” by Dave Carroll on YouTube). Fortunately, the flight crew agrees to put my bag in the crew closet. But the fun was just beginning... We had boarded about an hour late (due to yet another mechanical problem) and once on the plane thunderstorms moved in. After three hours on the plane, we hit the federal limit of keeping passengers hostage, and we trundled back to the gate. Our con- nection in Denver to Fairbanks was gone by this point. After another hour in the airport we reboard the plane, with lightning still all around. By this time I’m working on plan B — I call United from my cell phone and look at options for getting to Fairbanks. Op- tion 1 is to leave Denver early the next
STEVE BARRY
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A well-timed phone callfrom United saying our flight was delayed by 30 minutes allowed some extra time to get one last train near Winnipeg, Manitoba, on August 31, 2013. This Canadian Pacific train had a pair of SD40-2s on the point.
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