Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "trackback" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+trackback" bit from the end of the URL.
Continental 2
I had the alarm clock set for 4:30, but awakened at 4 and saw snow covering everything. I decided trying to get any more sleep would be hopeless, so I headed out to the airport earlier than I had originally planned.
There was snow everywhere and the rental car said the external temperature for most of the trip was 32 F, but the highways were wet with occasional patches of slush. I drove well below the speed limit, being in an unfamiliar vehicle, but still made decent time.
By 6 am I had returned the rental, taken the shuttle to the terminal, passed through security, and bought some breakfast. I ate in the seating area that served Houston.
After the 7am flight had loaded, the gate attendants came around to the few people left in the seating area and asked: Were we scheduled to fly to Houston?
Did we have connections? and Had we checked bags?
My answers were Yes, Yes and No, so they put me on the earlier flight. That was just as well, since by the time the plane was de-iced and took off it was after 8.
I was able to watch them de-icing the Frontier jet with the white rabbit on the tail while we waited to be de-iced. It was fascinating. There is one tanker truck on each side of the plane being de-iced. The trucks have guys in booths at the top of big cherry-picker arms riding up and down and around controlling the nozzles that spray the de-icer solutions. They have to stretch the cherry-pickers all the way up to spray the top of the planes tail, but they stay lower when they are working on the wings and ailerons and plane body. First they spray some pink stuff that melts ice and snow and colors any snow and ice that hasn't melted yet, so they can see what they missed. Then they spray some green stuff that helps prevent additional ice from forming.
Even after we finally took off, the plane flew the long way around to avoid bad weather over central Texas, so we arrived a half hour later than the 8 am flight's original arrival time. But that still left me a comfortable amount of time to reach my flight to Mobile.
I heard the Houston gate attendants telling people they already had printed out new boarding passes on later flights for people with connections to Newark (and, I suppose, other destinations). That was unexpectedly well organized -- I'm even more impressed by the Continental staff in Bush airport in Houston. (Though I tend to think that flying from Denver to Newark by way of Houston is a prime symptom of what is wrong with aviation in this country...)
I'm going to add Continental to my list of favored airlines, along with Frontier.
After all that, my flight from Houston to Mobile actually arrived 15 minutes early.
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