American Airlines

Officially, American Airlines are a bunch of chumps. Why, you ask? Well, I have full intents to tell you, obviously.

My first flight out from Portland was at 6:45 AM, but wasn’t on American, but actually on Alaskan Airlines. They were actually quite a pleasing airline. The flight was empty, for the most part, and I couldn’t convince them to give me a free upgrade to First Class, but they at least provided a snack on the flight, as opposed to American, who chooses to now sell their snacks for a ridiculous price of $4 (items that consist the package cost less than a $1 in total).

My arrival was in San Jose, CA - 8:20 AM, which was 15 minutes ahead of schedule. I was pleased. However, to no fault of American Airlines, the airport was under complete reconstruction. As a result, I ended up having to leave the terminal we arrived at (which used a drive-up ramp as opposed to the standard ramps), use an inter-terminal bus to take me over to Terminal A. However, rather than being provided access to the terminal without having to go through the TSA security, I was treated just like any other person coming from the outside, and had to go through security AGAIN. This was quite annoying and rather pissed me off seeing as the security line wrapped quite a way around the building. It took me about 30-45 minutes to get through security.

So, when it was time for my flight from San Jose, CA to DFW, we ended up leaving 25 to 30 minutes late. Upsetting, yes, but the pilot managed to get us on the ground at DFW right on time, giving me plenty of time to get to my next gate for departure, except for one small detail. Our arrival gate was occupied by the time we arrived, so we were holding on the ground for 45 minutes - with no other available gates available to dock at. So, as a result of 45 minutes delay caused me to have only 15 minutes to run between terminals to get to my next gate. However, once we were at the arrival gate, it took another 10 minutes for everyone to get off the plane, thus giving me 5 minutes to get to the plane. Melissa informed me that it was the last flight out that night (via Cell Phone), so I ran harder than I’d ever run before.

I managed to get there right as they had closed the cabin and already started one of the engines. So, lucky for me, the somehow ended up stalling long enough for me to get there - the plane left 20 minutes late as a result of me.

But, worse of all was the fact that both Melissa AND my luggage somehow didn’t end up on the plan back to College Station. There was actually quite a shortage of luggage on the flight - as there were other people who were missing their luggage.

I might elaborate more on this later, but for now I have other things to do. Ciao!