Singing Praise For an Un-Sung Hero
by Amy Mattinat
There Are Hero’s Everywhere
I was in Cincinnati for a meeting of independent auto repair shops and was scheduled to fly back to Vermont on a Sunday at 9 am. I was flying from Cinn. to Philly to Burlington. Take off from Cinn. was right on time. The trouble began when we got close to landing in Philadelphia. There were multiple thunderstorms and we circled around the airport waiting for traffic control to find a hole in the storm for us to land.
This pilot really wanted to land the plane in Philly. After flying in circles for over an hour he announced that we had about 20 more min. before we ran out of fuel, but he was certain there would be a break in the storm and we could land. Everyone in the cabin pulled out a time piece and started counting down. When we got to about 10 min. he gave up and headed to Harrisburg to re-fuel.
There was a group sigh of relief when the wheels of the plane touched the ground
They re-fueled the plane right away, and then we sat on the runway going nowhere for 7 hours. YES, seven hours and all they gave us was water and a very small overly sweet cookie that just made me really hunger.
The pilot, staff and passengers were just about to mutiny when Harrisburg finally gave they OK for the plane to pull up to a hanger and let us off. We were given less then 10 min. to buy some food and jump on a bus that drove us to Philadelphia.
If I was not starving and had been thinking clearly, I would have never got on a bus to drive to an airport that was shut down all day with hundreds hundreds of people going nowhere.
When we arrived at the airport we were led to a line that I swear was 1/2 mile long. When I finally got to the counter I was told there were no seats on any airline to Burlington for two days. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
So I booked a flight to Boston, rented a car to Vermont and found a quiet corner to get some sleep along with hundreds of other folks stranded in Philly.
The next morning I washed up in a bathroom, ate breakfast and worked at my makeshift office. How did we ever travel before computers?
At 1:00 pm my flight to Boston was canceled. I was feeling pretty low until I found Tracy! She told me she was the Best of the Best airline customer service representatives in the whole airport, and she was not kidding!
Not sure how she did it, but she got me on a flight to Burlington that night at 9:45 pm and it actually took off and landed on time. Took 38 hours but I finally made it home. Tracy, you are my hero!