Sunday Fun: Airlines and Thunderstorms

The excerpts below are from a column Dave Barry wrote in 2000. The only difference is that airport hot dogs are now $7.50 and, instead of the airline agent typing for 10-minutes to accomplish anything, it now takes 15. I'm convinced they are paid by the keystroke as opposed to, say, getting planes off on time with courteous customer service.

No institution experiences as many thunderstorms as an airline. Huge, violent clouds surround airline employees at all times. They cannot hold company picnics, because the death toll from lightning strikes would be in the hundreds. If we want to end the drought in sub-Saharan Africa, all we have to do is put an airline there; the entire region would be underwater within hours.

In practical terms, what this means for you, the traveler, is that when planning your airplane trip this summer, you should take into consideration the fact that your flight will never actually take off.

Of course, the airline will not tell you this. Airlines have a strict policy of never revealing flight information to passengers. Say you have a ticket for a flight that's scheduled to depart at 6 p.m. The airport TV monitors will insist that this flight is on schedule, even if the time is 5:57 p.m. and there is no actual, physical airplane out at the end of the jetway.

He goes on to write,

TRUE ANECDOTE: Recently, I was scheduled to take a flight from Miami to Chicago. Of course, the airline said the flight was on time. 

I was not fooled by this message. Clearly, airline computer personnel -- the same ones who make sure that no two passengers are ever charged the same fare for the same flight -- had hacked into the weather site to prevent me from obtaining [accurate] information about my flight. That's how good their security is! We should put these people in charge of protecting our nuclear secrets.

So I was forced to check with an airline agent, who tapped on his keyboard for a moment. I could not see his computer screen, but I am guessing it said something like:

``VIOLENT THUNDERSTORMS HAVE REDUCED O'HARE AIRPORT TO A PILE OF RUBBLE. COMMERCIAL AVIATION THERE WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR YEARS. BUT WE HAVE PLENTY OF $4.50 HOT DOGS FOR SALE AT THE GATE AREA.''

The agent looked up and told me: ``I'm showing that flight on schedule.''

So I went to the gate, where the signboard showed that the flight was on time right up until they announced that it was canceled because of thunderstorms in Chicago.

So, with the Memorial Day weekend coming up in less than two weeks, I wish you smooth and thunderstorm-free travels.