A Tale from the Tarmac

He Said: Suprisingly, my flight out of Chicago got out relatively on time this week. Typically, if there is a spot shower in Boise, all flights at ORD are immediately delayed 3 hours. This week, they kept on flying despite all the rain in STL. When I got to my seat, the seat next to me was already occupied and this guy made it perfectly clear that there was to be no armrest battle on this flight. He had every available inch of that thing covered. Fair enough.

The flight was no big deal but we landed in the middle of a thunderstorm. In the case of lightning, all of the grounds crew has to go inside which meant we had to hang out on the runway for about 30 minutes or so. Normally this isn't that bad. I pulled out my laptop and killed some time. Less than a minute later, however, a woman across the aisle decided this was the appropriate time to make the loudest phone call of all time. For the rest of our time on the plane, everyone from row 5 to row 30 got to hear how this woman is a big deal and how she obviously makes all the big decisions for what certainly is a major corporation.

Based on this experience, the thought of it someday being possible for everyone to use cell phones during a flight makes me want to barf.