Finding The Right Price With Miss Daisy & The Right DFW American Airlines Wichita Falls Gate

Well, after two weeks of being in one of the un-South regions of America, on Saturday night, the day before the latest iteration of Mother's Day I found myself back in Texas, in DFW's airport's Terminal B, Gate 17, waiting to fly out of there in about an hour.

It had been a long day. It began with my final swim of this most recent Arizona visit. Followed by my final McDonald's visit of this visit.

After McDonald's I drove Miss Daisy to Sister Jackie's where I finally got to watch the infamous episode of The Price is Right where McDonald's Jon worked with Drew Carey to try and find the right price.

I had been told few details. I did know, due to a noisy hint from Jon, a few days ago, at the Maricopa McDonald's, that one of the items he won made noise. And that all were enjoying the noisemaker much more than was anticipated.

Mom is able to see, somewhat, when the images are big and bright and the viewing angle is maximized, which is what was the case this morning at Sister Jackie's Price is Right viewing theater, which is what you see photo documented above.

The first iteration of this blogging was written last night whilst waiting to get on board a teeny plane for the short hop to Wichita Falls. The above was edited this Mother's Day morning. The following I will leave as is, telling some of the fun of flying with American Airlines....

A person who seems to have some limited English speaking ability is telling us, loudly, that boarding will soon take place.

The boarding gate has been changed twice since my arrival. I am fairly confident this is the final gate. I had yet one more bizarre DFW American Airlines landing experience today. That makes three times in a row we land, get to the gate, sit, sit some more, sit even longer, with the pilot eventually telling us the gate crew is not yet making the walkway connection by which we exit the plane.

Almost a half hour later we were finally allowed off the HOT plane. I was sitting next to a nervous older guy, well, a couple years older than me, flying from Oregon, to a class reunion in Abilene. He was afraid he would not make his connection. This was his first time flying in decades. So he had had no experience with the uncomfortable flying experience we all enjoy nowadays.

We landed in Terminal A. The Abilene connection was in Terminal D. So, we had fun riding the SkyLink, or whatever it is called. I was pleased because I had time to kill. Over three hours of time in need of killing.

Like I said, the above was written last night. Now I am back in the present, the morning of Mother's Day. So, after I wrote the above and shut down my computer, we were told to move to yet one more different gate. This time to Gate B-14. And then a few minutes later, back to Gate 17. This was a shorter move than the one from Gate 44.

And then as we sat there waiting the waiting passengers who had had bad experiences before with the last flight of the night to Wichita Falls began speculating that the flight might be getting cancelled, since they had experienced that misery before, with American Airlines only offering a hotel voucher and the first flight out in the morning. Along with the suggestion one could rent a car to drive to Wichita Falls, but, without American Airlines paying for the rental.

It was nerve wracking. I just wanted to get home.

And then when the boarding time arrived there was no move to do so, for a couple minutes. And then the boarding began, with me first onboard.

The short flight between Wichita Falls and DFW is a bit bizarre. The plane only gets to an elevation of around 16,000. It barely reaches that elevation when it seems the descent begins. And yet the solo flight attendant passes out bags of pretzels, and then goes down the aisle holding a big bottle of water in one hand and a handful of plastic cups in the other hand. The water wanting passenger pulls off a cup and holds it whilst the flight attendant fills it.

Halfway.

Water service barely ends when the pilot informs the flight attendant it is time to prepare for landing.

Unlike the last time, last night the pilot did not get lost on the Sheppard Air Force base tarmac. He pretty much quickly found the terminal.

I guess I am glad to be back in Texas. I am running my A/C for the first time this year.

I have a backlog of blogging fodder from my two weeks in Arizona. I may get to that in the coming days. Maybe. We shall see....

The Next To Last Morning Of November Thinking About Bankrupt American Airlines & Other Fort Worth Corporate Boondoggles

The steamy view through my primary viewing portal on the world is not due to a freezing frost on this next to last morning of the next to last month of 2011.

It is yet one more clear blue sky dawn of a new day semi-deep nowhere near the heart of Texas.

Currently heated to a chilly 37 degrees.

If the temperature predictors are correct it looks like Thursday may be the first day in several that the 24 hour average is 50 degrees or above, thus warming the water I swim in sufficiently to make going swimming doable.

Elsie Hotpepper has gone missing. Again. Even though she sent me an email telling me she has not gone missing. Again.

The most troubling news this morning was that American Airlines has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. American Airlines is one of the few big corporations based in Fort Worth. Along with Radio Shack and Pier One Imports. There may be others I am not aware of.

I'm not sure if Pier One Imports is still in business. They built themselves a very nice corporate headquarters near the Trinity River and then soon had to abandon their nice new corporate headquarters to Chesapeake Energy so Chesapeake Energy could have a nice new building from which to run its shadow government of Fort Worth.

I am almost certain that Radio Shack is still in business, even though Radio Shack also abandoned its very nice new corporate headquarters in downtown Fort Worth. I think Radio Shack may still lease a room or two in its former corporate headquarters, but it has mostly been taken over by Tarrant County College.

It is interesting how Fort Worth's scandals and boondoggles intersect.

Fort Worth abused eminent domain to take away a public housing project so the land could be given to Radio Shack. Radio Shack then took away Fort Worth's free parking lots and subway which used to make visiting downtown Fort Worth pleasantly easy.

Meanwhile Tarrant County College began building a very expensive new downtown campus that eventually turned into a boondoogle that was costing too much. So, that construction was scaled back with the majority of the new downtown campus moved over to the then mostly abandoned Radio Shack corporate headquarters.

And now American Airlines is bankrupt. If AA goes out of business that is going to leave an awful lot of open slots at D/FW International Airport.

I wonder what causes corporations headquartered in Fort Worth to have such woeful woes?

Stuck Bag American Airlines Drama At D/FW Airport

Miss Puerto Rico's return to Texas was a bit bumpy. In San Juan, American Airlines insisted she check in the bag that she had carried on in Dallas.

Miss Puerto Rico had resolved to never check in a bag with American Airlines again after they lost a bag filled with all sorts of goodies and despite multiple filings of claims for restitution, American Airlines did not make good on their mistake.

I knew Miss PR's plane was late. When she landed she called me. I was barely on my way and was surprised she was on the ground. She told me, no problem, we are stuck on the tarmac til a gate opens.

The traffic jamming was terrible on the way to the airport. I was sure I'd be late, even though Miss PR was stuck on the tarmac,

I arrived at the terminal. D. The new International Terminal. I called. Miss PR was off the plane and waiting at Baggage Claim D16. This is when I learned she had been forced to check in a bag with the notoriously incompetent American Airlines baggage handlers.

I got to Baggage Claim D16 to see the bizarre sight of a guy standing on the moving baggage carousel, yanking on what looked like a briefcase stuck in the baggage conveyor belt.

Multiple attempts were made to get the Emergency Shut Off button to turn off the conveyor belt. But it would not stop.

Eventually someone somewhere was able to stop the thing.

Various people tried to pull the stuck bag loose. To no avail.

After about a half an hour the woman you see in the picture, above, took off her stiletto heels and climbed up on the carousel to try and extract the stuck bag. She was on the phone at the time. She had some connection to American Airlines and was making all sorts of phone calls to all sorts of people to get someone to come fix this.

Eventually a guy showed up with tools. There was a lot of secret agent type communication between the guy with tools and someone in control of the conveyor belt about reversing the motor to reverse the conveyor belt and free the briefcase.

After what seemed like a really long time the conveyor belt reversed, to no avail. It's resistance detection shutdown feature worked.

So, then the guy with the tools used a jackknife, which none of the fliers had, due to those, you know, flight safety rules to combat terrorism, to free the briefcase.

Then he told the guy on the other end of his secret agent communicator to put the conveyor belt back in forward mode.

Soon the baggage moving sound was heard, lights flashed and the conveyor belt and carousel were moving again. There was some cheering and applause

Miss Puerto Rico's unwillingly checked in piece of luggage was 3rd to arrive.

A happy ending to a very weird visit to D/FW Airport.

Now, to be clear, I do not believe this bizarre incident was an American Airlines problem. It was a D/FW Airport problem.

Why did the Emergency Shut-off not work? Why was the design of the conveyor belt such that something could slip through and jam up the conveyor belt? Why was the conveyor belt not designed in a way that if something did get stuck that it could easily be released, by, I don't know, maybe pulling a lever and creating a gap between the belt and the chunk of metal that the briefcase got stuck in.

Anyway, yet one more Airport Adventure courtesy of Miss Puerto Rico. And due to all this aggravation it cost 2 bucks instead of 1 to escape the airport, due to being detained through no fault of our own. Outrageous. I want my dollar back.

American Airlines Jet Lands Safely at LAX During Lunch

I turned on the TV during my lunch break. I thought I might get some Republican National Convention or Gustav news.

But instead all the cable news stations were excitedly waiting for an American Airlines Boeing 737 to land. The jet had blown a tire on take off.

It then circled around the LA area for hours dumping jet fuel while LAX emergency crews prepared for the emergency landing.

Those unlucky people on board had been expecting a direct flight to Toronto. Instead they got a long tour of the Los Angeles area. I don't know if the people on board got food and drinks during the ordeal.

Fox News had a copter in the air shooting video of planes landing. We got to watch a couple land while the news people pondered if this was the injured jet or not.

Very suspenseful.

And then the jet with the bad tire finally came into view. We watched live as it made a perfectly smooth landing.

And then the injured jet became non-news.

I've watched this type thing before where they'll break away right at the key moment so as to spare us viewers the horror of watching something horrible.

This time the camera did not blink. I don't know why.

I also don't know why they cover this type thing. Though it does make for some dramatic TV viewing, I guess. Somehow it seems sort of irresponsible to me.