My Not-Really-Near-Death Near Death Experience

OK - so a Thursday supposed-to-be-day trip to Chicago took a left turn into an unplanned overnight stay, thanks to a foot-of-snow-dump blizzard that was the actualization of the "light snow showers" on Yahoo weather.

So after a gut-busting expense account meal,the purchase of overpriced sundries from the Hotel Sofitel gift shop, and a sweaty nap, I arose at 4:30 a.m. to get the six o'clock flight. I had some naive idea that I would get home by 9am with enough time to do a quick workout and grab a shower before heading to the office at lunchtime.

Two hours, one 24oz Dunkin Donuts coffee, three de-icings, and one People Magazine later, we actually took off, heavy snow be damned.

So not long after takeoff we heard the typical ding...but then it continued to ding...ding...ding...and ding... On the ground, continuous dinging is annoying, on a plane, unsettling. Nonetheless I was pretty absorbed in the latest issue of US Weekly. Being so focused on Britney's latest antics, I didn't really notice anything amiss until the following sequence of events:


1) The running lights on the cabin floor and the lights over the emergency exits lit up and started blinking, accompanied by alternating dings and piercing beeps.

2) The flight attendant came RUNNING down the aisle from the back of the plane with a worried look on her face and a screwdriver (the tool, not the morning beverage) in her hand.

3) An acrid smell filled the plane, as the back of the main cabin filled up with smoke.


Then the captain, displaying a remarkable talent for understatement, came on the loudspeaker and with a Lumbergian cadence said, "Ummm...yeah, hello folks, the activity with the alarm system you're seeing is a little, yeah...unusual. We're gonna go ahead and and make an unscheduled landing in Detroit. Please finish your TPS reports and put away your electronic devices."

Well, panic panic panic blah blah blah, we did land safely. They checked out the plane and said that de-icing fluid had gotten into the vents and was what caused all of the problems. After two hours of inspection and maintenance, they herded us back on the SAME plane...and 20 minutes into the next leg of the flight, the SAME damn things - the smoke, the dinging, the worried flight attendants, the panic panic panic blah blah blah - all happened again. The last straw was their refusal to come around with the beverage cart, meaning we had to endure the noise and nervousness without benefit of self-medicating cocktails.

On the bright side: since we had to make a second 'unscheduled landing' at LaGuardia (our final destination) they allowed us to land right away instead of going into the holding pattern that all the other planes were in. I left my hotel room at 4:30 am, and arrived at Laguardia 4:30 pm, several pounds lighter thanks to all of the nervous sweat that I excreted on the flights.

But my story has a heartwarming end - after a nastily worded email to the complaints department (they don't seem to give out phone numbers on the American website any more) - I was awarded 10,000 'bonus miles' (their term) for my 'inconvenience' (also theirs). That's like 1 mile for each beep and ding I had to listen to on the flights.

Now THAT's customer service.