TheBanyanTree: Atlanta's Closed - Revisited

[redclay]

04/10/09
First portion written while in the skies above Atlanta GA
22:45


Left Chicago late today. Our plane's departure was delayed by bad weather in 
Atlanta.  Storms were moving into the world's busiest airport and we were held 
back by ATC. (Air Traffic Control)

It had been a long day already. I had been up since 4:00 in the morning and by 
the scheduled flight time I was already frazzled.  

They pushed the plane back from the gate on time, parked us on the "tarmac", 
and then about 10 minutes later the pilot announced our delay leaving 
Chicago's O'Hare airport and the expected delays we might encounter when we 
arrived in Atlanta airspace.  "Not to worry, folks, we've made sure that we've 
got a full tank of gas in case we get into a protracted holding pattern over 
Atlanta," was included in the pilot's announcement.

After the delay on the tarmac in Chicago (about 40 mintues) we made it to 
Atlanta airspace in good time. We were immediately put into a holding pattern, 
which the pilot announced.  A holding pattern is a big lazy circle typically 
and circle we did . . . over and over . . . and over . . . and over again.  
Two hours worth of circling in this manner: we'd come up to the edge of the 
storm, a nasty looking wall of dark swirling clouds fraught with almost 
continuous lightning flashes.  Then we'd back off of them and make a wide lazy 
loop and end back up again against the same angry vortex of  clouds that had, 
what seemed to be a million flash bulbs going off inside them. 

Then we'd do it again.

By the time the pilot announced that we'd been cleared to make a southerly 
"vector" approach to the runways we'd been in the air for almost 4 hours.  I 
looked at my watch and thought, "We could have flown from Chicago to Seattle 
in less time."  I'd not realized it at the time, but my patience was started 
to be stretched thinner than a graphene membrane.

And by the time the pilot announced our initial landing approach we'd burned 
most of our jet fuel as well.

So down we went on the vector approach, initially losing altitude in what 
seemed like an inch an hour rate.  At times the plane would pass through a 
cloud bank and roll, twist, shake and shudder,  dropping what felt like 200 
feet in a nanosecond.  Then we'd resume our excruciatingly slow descent again, 
trying to dodge cloud banks and other planes.  

This continued until suddenly we entered an monster cloud and all hell broke 
loose.  For 10 minutes we passed through the most intense rain I'd ever 
encountered.  It seemed as if we'd submerged into a lake or large body of 
water.   How the plane's engines didn't drown out or loose power with so much 
water going in them I'll never know.  There was so much rain, in a continuous 
horizontal stream screaming by, that, in the 22 plus years I'd flown business 
flights, I never saw the likes of it before.  

Looking out the window of the plane, each time the strobe light on the wing 
tip fired, it looked like a huge fireworks explosion - all that from the 
refection of the powerful strobe against so many rain droplets passing the 
wing as such a heavy rate.

We continued on this course until suddenly, without warning, the pilot gunned 
the engines and started pulling us up like we were doing a power take off on a 
too-short runway, again through powerful sheets of rain, "hellacious" winds 
and lightning.  I'd secretly guessed we had missed our landing and were told 
by ATC to pass over the airport at the last minute.

After another excruciatingly long period the pilot then told the flight 
attendants to prepare for landing -- the second time now in this flight. This 
time the plane had a smoother approach but we touched down hard and came in 
faster than I can ever remember landing in a plane before.  

After a long, long  application of reverse engine thrust and shuddering, 
screeching brakes the pilot announced, "Well, I guess some of you looking out 
the windows have realized that we haven't landed in Atlanta. We've landed in 
Greenville-Spartanburg due to the inclement weather in Atlanta and our low 
fuel condition.  We'll be taking on fuel and waiting from ATC to advise us 
when we will be clear to take off again and when we can expect to land in 
Atlanta.  Feel free to get up and stretch your legs but we will not be 
deplaning.  I have asked for ice and drinks to be brought aboard."

Well, there we were on a chockabloc full plane that had been in the air four 
hours, that had had at least two rounds of serving drinks and snacks while we 
were in the air.  Now we were being served more drinks and snacks, and as one 
could reasonably predict, the toilets starting overflowing soon thereafter.

I'd had enough.  I immediately went to a flight attendant and asked if I could 
deplane.  At first she said, "No," and I mentioned to her that I didn't want 
to get off the plane temporarily.  I wanted off that flight, period.

She asked me to wait a minute and she, wading through all the people standing 
then in the aisle, made her way to the cockpit and returned about 10 minutes 
later.  In the meantime the captain announced that he had asked the airport to 
send a pump truck to take care of the toilet disasters and that we could 
expect some relief soon.

When the flight attendant returned she informed me that the pilot wanted to 
speak to me.  I then worked my way through the jammed aisles, almost wearing 
out the phrase, "Excuse me, I need to get by, please," until I finally made it 
through to the cockpit.  I explained to the captain that I had been up since 
04:00, worked all day and was tired enough that I did not want to go any 
further on the flight and preferred to deplane in Greenville-Spartanburg.  
After hearing my explanation and taking my name, he agreed that I could 
deplane and I, after what seemed like a hundred "Excuse me's" more, finally 
worked my way back to my seat.

In my seat I mulled my decision over again in my mind:  I'd been up since 
04:00, worked all day, which was the last day of a week that started the 
previous Sunday morning, waited at the airport in Chicago for 6 hours to catch 
a flight that was delayed in the air by over 2-1/2 hours, of which more than 2 
hours were spent circling and dodging lightning strikes until we landed 
finally in the wrong airport.  I was tired. We had no sure word how long it 
would take to get refueled, no idea for sure when we could take off again for 
Atlanta, no  assurance that we would be able to land then without another 
round of holding pattern hell.  I could elect that as a choice or . . . 

get a hotel room and, after a decent night's sleep, take a leisurely 3 hour 
drive home instead.  

"Nope, I'll take the known over the unknown this time," I mused.  And if the 
other reason's weren't enough, the thought of being in that packed, silver, 
narrow tube for another several hours or more, with toilet backup spilled onto 
the floor and the plane full of cranky, worried passengers pretty well helped 
seal the deal.

When the toilet pump truck arrived, so did a police escort. I grabbed my carry 
on baggage and they led me from the plane to a waiting police vehicle parked 
outside the plane.  From there they took me to the terminal.  From there I 
booked a hotel and caught the hotel shuttle to the hotel.

As I got to the hotel and was taking my bags from the shuttle, I heard the 
roar of a jet's engines at full throttle. I looked down at my watch: 12:10 am 
it said.  I looked up to see what was, no doubt, the plane I came in on 
passing overhead on its way to Atlanta and I couldn't help but think of an 
Arnold Schwarzenegger's line in his "Terminator 2" movie.  I found myself 
repeating it out loud to the passing plane:

"Hasta la vista . . . Baby!"