Welcome to Detroit! My Home for the Next 20 Hours (At Least)

I knew I had some karma to pay back for finally defeating that driver's license thing.

I suppose I should start at the beginning.

Now, Delta. Tsk, tsk. An incredible record of failure today, from the moment I fell into your capable hands at Narita. First, the check-in kiosk apparently wasn't showing the seating charts correctly. I chose what looked like an aisle seat, but turned out to be the middle of a row of three; the young woman next to me was pleasantly surprised to find that what looked like a middle seat was actually a window. Seems they had the seat letters off by one.

During the flight, the A/C malfunctioned, causing a fine, chilling dew to settle on every surface in the cabin, for which the flight crew seemed very put-upon to apologize. Partway through, when they dimmed the cabin for the in-flight movies (no in-seat video, of course), we all realized the reading lights weren't working. After another put-upon apology from the flight crew, I decided to pop a couple Dramamine and knock myself out. I certainly wasn't about to watch the movie.

Upon arrival, then, the police greeted the plane, apparently to question a woman who got angry at the flight crew when they couldn't re-seat her, though her seat was saturated with dew. (I was lucky--the damp never got worse than a thin film in my part of the plane.) Customs and immigration was fine, but the baggage claim was not. Our bags came out on two different carousels, one marked from Tokyo and one marked from Taipei. Granted, the flight originated in Taipei, but you'd think they'd list both departure points on both carousels?

Naturally, my bag showed up on the carousel from Taipei.

(A happy side note: in the customs line I ran into an old colleague from APIS--Nadine, the former elementary school principal. She's teaching in Singapore now and was heading back to Canada for the summer.)

When I got past customs, I checked the big board, only to find that my flight to Pittsburgh was delayed by 3 hours, which on a 20+ hour travel day really isn't all that bad. While I was en route to the gate, though, they cancelled the flight and automatically re-booked me for the next one--which was subsequently delayed, then cancelled. As of right now, I have a confirmed seat out of Detroit tomorrow morning and I'm on standby for the last flight to Pittsburgh tonight.

I could have had it worse, though: apparently, they've cancelled every flight from Detroit to Pittsburgh today, so some of the folks on my cancelled flights were actually booked to leave Detroit this morning. To add insult to injury, about a third of them were coming to town for the Pirates' game tonight. Needless to say, these were Red Sox fans--I'd think twice about driving downtown to see the Pirates, let alone boarding a plane. That makes me wonder that perhaps this wasn't my karma after all: maybe I was just caught up in the karmic aftermath of the Boston Bruins' Stanley Cup win. The fact that Boston fans are suffering does lighten the burden a bit.

While waiting for word on my second flight, I got to chatting with a stranded Delta pilot about the delays. Apparently, none of them have been related to weather. He seemed to think they were knock-on effects from earlier in the week, when storms kept enough planes a pilots from getting where they were needed. Why this should affect the Pittsburgh flight exclusively is beyond me--I don't see any other cancellations on the board.

The second cancellation was particularly farcical: they apparently re-routed a larger plane to handle the extra passengers, but failed to locate a first officer for the new plane. No one bothered to tell the gate agents, however, so we sat waiting while the delay grew longer and longer and the scant few seats left tonight disappeared. By the time we were officially cancelled, there were basically no seats out of Detroit going anywhere.

If I weren't so jet-lagged, I'd simply rent a car and drive home, but I don't trust myself on the road in my addled state. At least Delta is putting me up in a pretty nice hotel (Hilton Garden Inn, when everyone else got Best Western). Pro tip: always, always, always be polite and friendly with the airline agents, no matter how badly their employers have ruined your day.