Recorded in the beautiful home office, Chateau/ Relaxo, FL.
If you’re a first-time listener, welcome. If you're a returning listener welcome back.
We skipped the mid-month episode, just too much going on trying to keep that home life work-life balanced to get an episode recorded.
Here’s what’s in store for the April craziness -
Remember the childhood game “Chutes & Ladders” in modern times we play “Emergency chutes & what’s the matter?
Herding cats at JFK, sort of.
One rule for life from the movie Roadhouse
Southwest Airlines "It's like déjà vu all over again."
No shirt, No shoes, No service
Kids on a plane
More kids on a plane
When real life imitates the movies
But first a quick travel update.
One quick trip to Columbia, SC for a weekend getaway. The 6-hour drive up I95 would become a 9-hour drive by the time we hit Jacksonville. Make no mistake about it I95 is horrendous, from Florida to Maine somewhere along the way you will experience delays. The first part of our delay was the remaining snowbirds were headed back north. The second part of our delay came from the Georgia-South Carolina state line, where I95 goes from 4 lanes down to two lanes. Think of it as the merge lane at the onramp except instead of 5 or six cars you’ve got four lanes of cars doing 70 MPH.
The base camp was the Hampton Inn Columbia-Downtown Historic District. It was a perfect location as it was located near everything we wanted to do. Dinner was at the Hickory Tavern which offered tasty sports bar food with a solid mix of local beers, plus it was within walking distance of the hotel.
Saturday morning was spent at the Soda City Market. Soda City Market is a producer-only market which means vendors must make or grow their own products. Their motto is ‘Find everything you need to nourish your brain, body, and belly”. The market fields an average of 150 vendors per week, and over 400 unique vendors throughout the year! Again an easy walk from the hotel.
After that, we grabbed the car and headed to Cromers Peanuts to stock up on boiled peanuts and Peach Nehi. Cromer’s was started by my late grandmother’s Uncle Julian D. Cromer. Julian D. Cromer was an early adopter of grassroots marketing with his slogan Cromer’s “Guaranteed Worst in Town." And that today that slogan is still on display inside the store.
Lunch was at Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar. The CEO went with the Smokehouse Burger which consisted of an Angus patty topped with pulled pork, pepper jack cheese, and onion straws. I passed on the beef and went with their special of the month a Peanut Thai Chicken sandwich which was amazing. Don’t pass up their tatter tots covered with their special seasoning, I never knew tots could be kicked up a notch.
That night was a formal event at Stone River. Stone River is set on the banks of the Congaree River with a perfect view of downtown Columbia. The service and food were spot on and made the perfect ending to a quick get-a-way weekend. And the drive back only took us 6 ½ hours.
On to the April craziness.
Let’s open with one of my favorite topics, the deployment of an airplane’s emergency slide.
Dateline LOS ANGELES - Delta flight 1714 was headed towards Seattle right up to the point when a passenger opened an emergency exit door causing the emergency slide to deploy as the plane was pushing away from the gate.
In case you were curious, I was, the cost to repack a slide can cost as much as $30,000. According to the Consumerist, that cost will cover the repacking of the slide — which can cost $6,000 to $12,000 alone — and any repairs that may need to be done to the aircraft.
Now here’s the odd thing according to Valley News, the person was not arrested, but “transported to a local hospital for mental evaluation,”.
Even odder, “The aircraft was holding to taxi for takeoff when the passenger exited the aircraft and was initially detained by Delta staff ahead of being arrested by local law enforcement,” the official statement said. This means Delta isn’t like many businesses where if an employee witnesses an infraction they are told to not engage.
And in the end, the aircraft returned to a gate and passengers were put on another plane Delta posted.
When it comes to herding cats we must thank Norse Atlantic Airline. Norse has a fleet of roughly 10 planes and positions itself as a low-cost, long-haul airline. Part of Norse Atlantic’s mission statement is this - Norse is dedicated to doing two things excellently: Providing top customer experience and affordable tickets.
So how’s this for a customer experience - In early April Norse forgot to Send Arriving Passengers To Customs, and Now They Have To Return To JFK.
This was a flight from France and it appears that passengers deplaned, grabbed their luggage, and headed for the train, their Uber, or their car. That’s it no 2 - 3 hour customs search, claim, and explain. If you’ve ever traveled internationally this was a gift. It was a gift until the next morning and that’s when tiktokbrowser took to Reddit to post this email that they received -
"This is a reminder that you have to be cleared by immigration when entering the US. You did not unfortunately clear immigration upon arrival into New York JFK last night. Please report back to Terminal 7 at JFK this morning at 0900LT at Row E. It is in your own interest that you are processed by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of the US Government."
Through the Reddit comments tiktokbrowser posted a few more details “We got off the plane, passed baggage claim, and were right at the exit! We were so confused but we were like ok I guess??”
They even reached out to CBP Customs & Border Patrol and they were wishy-washy on whether or not everyone really did have to return to JFK.
In the end, tiktokbrowser finished with this, “Lol - yes I went back. Spent hundreds on Ubers to go back. Supervisor of CBP told me I had to go back”.
This was no doubt the fault of one single individual that missed the “Customs & Border Patrol” day at the gate agent school.
One of the movies that I will always stop to watch is Roadhouse, and if you’ve listened to any of the previous 187 episodes I will often reference one of John Dalton’s, played by Patrick Swayze “3 simple rules”. Rule #3 “Be nice”.
In case you were wondering about the other two rules.
Rule #,1Expect the unexpected.
Rule #2, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary.
Well Gary Leff from View From The Wing must also listen to Travel Stories because last month he posted this - The Most Important Trick for Getting What You Want From Airlines (And Other Large Businesses)
If you’ve never seen Roadhouse Swayze’s character Dalton majored in Philosophy at NYU. And Gary claims that he’s been a proponent of the Philosophy of “hang up, call back” for many years. When you don’t get the answer you want the first time, hang up the phone and talk to someone else.
This happened a few weeks ago with a coworker as he was stranded at Dulles due to weather delays. He was flying on United where he had no status. After three phone calls of “Sorry, there are no other flights available” he hit gold on call number four as he got a flight into Miday which put him closer to his final destination.
Gary also added this If you’re dealing with an airline on the day of travel you have some options:
the check-in counter
kiosk, website, or app
telephone reservations
customer service counter
gate agent
Twitter (and in some cases Facebook Messenger or other social media or messaging app)
Nowhere in the post does Gary mention screaming, cussing breaking things, or removing your clothes, more on that in a minute.
It comes down to being nice and asking nicely. Believe me, if that gate agent could go wrench on a 737 in order to not hear all the bitching about a mechanical delay they would.
Also, Rule #1 Expect the unexpected is also solid advice…. Actually, Roadhouse is filled with all sorts of life lessons, go watch it.
Yogi Berra once said, 'It's Deja Vu All Over Again'
For this let’s jump into the way-back machine to December 2022, so it’s not that far back.
If you traveled by plane over the past few weeks, hopefully, you have been reunited with your luggage and you finally have made it home.
2022 Christmas air travel was a dumpster fire and a winter storm ignited the fire on Friday, December 23rd, this resulted in lost, make that lots of lost luggage and lots of stranded passengers
Here are the quick numbers in case you forgot
Tuesday, December 27th Over 20,00 delayed flights and 5100 canceled flights.
Wednesday, December 28th Over 11,000 delayed flights and 4475 canceled flights.
Southwest Airlines took the brunt of it by canceling over 2500 flights on both Tuesday the 27th and Wednesday the 28th. Part of the issue was that Southwest bases its routes on a point-to-point system and not a hub system.
The other part was their outdated and aging technology infrastructure. Think of it as still relying on dial-up internet in 2023.
April 18th the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop which halted all Southwest Airlines flights from taking off. This was due to a technical glitch and that glitch was a firewall failure. I used the phrase “a firewall” as I hope Southwest has several firewalls and not just one “the firewall”.
Technology failure, again…. As I tend to say, have a good data backup or have a resume. My thought was that maybe a Southwest IT staff member decided to “quiet quit” by unplugging a network cable.
No shirt, No shoes, No service This is our first “Thank You Florida” story.
Selecting your seat on an airplane is important and most seasoned travelers are either a window person or an aisle person. If you’re a middle seat person then you're a monster. For years I was a window seat person, but for the last 5 years, I’ve been an aisle guy.
Here’s some travel advice, no matter your seat preference, do not, and I repeat do not leave your seat choice up to the airline they have a 1 in 3 shot of assigning you your preferred seat and they will get it wrong 100% of the time….. Trust me.
Last month, Charlotte to Fort Lauderdale “Thank you Florida” American Airlines passenger ignored my travel advice and didn’t get the window seat he wanted. And as you could well imagine he was not a happy passenger.
There’s a video, there’s always a video and it was posted on the IG account onlyinbroward. Broward is the county Fort Lauderdale is in.
The shirtless and low-hanging pant passenger was pacing back and forth to the boarding door and then began trashing the gate area. He TKO’d the boarding area sign before getting in several employees' faces followed up by ranting at no one in particular and then Charlotte officers gave him a prize, a set of shiny chrome bracelets followed by a ride in the back of a police car.
You know the Florida motto - Come on vacation, leave on probation except this lad is leaving Charlotte on prohibition.
Question of the day -
Why did the kids sprinkle sugar all over the floor of the airplane?
Because they wanted to have a sweet mess!
So let's jump right into this one, in case you’ve been on vacation with limited access to cell service and the internet.
Last month Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass posted a photo on Twitter showing a lot of popcorn on the floor of a plane where his kids were sitting.
Here’s the TWEET
“The flight attendant [on United Airlines] just made my 22 week pregnant wife traveling with a 5 year old and 2 year old get on her hands and knees to pick up the popcorn mess by my youngest daughter. Are you kidding me?!?!” he wrote.
In case you didn’t know this, Anthony Bass’s sister-in-law is country singer Jessie James Decker, wrote on her Instagram that her sister was “humiliated” and was “crying in the aisle” while picking up the popcorn.
Nearly 66 million people viewed the original tweet. As you can imagine it sparked an immediate debate over who is responsible for cleaning up after kids on a plane: their parents or flight attendants? Fair question.
In my humble opinion it is the parent's responsibility to clean up after their kids, be it at a grocery store, restaurant, church, or on an airplane. Be it you spent good money on a ticket and you are with a child and have two in two it does not make a flight attendant your personal servant. Mrs. Bass knew her kids made a mess, give any 5 and 2-year-olds a bag of popcorn and I promise you there will be a mess. Mrs. Bass should have got the flight attendant's attention, acknowledged the mess, and then asked nicely if the flight attendant would help her to clean up the mess I’m willing to bet the flight attendant would have said don’t worry about the mess we’ll handle it. Some might call her behavior entitled, I can’t judge that, but she should have asked for help and saved the internet from yet another stupid, senseless debate.
More kids on a plane via View from the Wing I give you - Southwest Airlines Flight Diverts After Passenger Goes On Anti-Baby Rant
A baby was crying on board a Southwest Airlines flight to Orlando, “Thank you Florida” and a passenger on board absolutely lost it. He spent three minutes on a rant about how couldn’t stand the sound of the baby, and things got so bad the flight had to divert.
What do we say, there’s a video, and there’s always a video, and this Ticky-Tok video has "More F-bombs than a Quentin Tarantino movie marathon." One passenger added that, by screaming, the passenger was annoying the rest of the passengers. Why was that ok if the baby’s crying wasn’t?
Looking at the video this man's poor wife, girlfriend whatever had the look on her face of “Here he goes again”
Screaming kids on a plane comes with the territory, especially when flying into Orlando. If the parent is doing all they can to comfort the child there is nothing else that can be done short of a capful of Dramamine.
Now the real gold with these posts comes from the comments - for example, SOBE ER DOC says:
Any flight to MCO is my personal version of hell. Totally get that these flights are school bus routes full of over-sugared kids heading to the parks. I can imagine how excited the kids are…I would have been if I had ever had the chance to fly to Orlando as a kid. I hope it’s everything they want it to be.
I just don’t want to be subjected to their “enthusiasm” any more than I would a bachelorette party, an Amway convention, Spring Break, you name it. It’s why I ALWAYS have a pair of noise-cancelling headphones with me so I can drown it out.
Sold advice SOBE ER DOC, solid advice.
Also, there’s no on/off switch on a baby
Finishing up with this - A pilot flying a small plane in South Africa with four passengers aboard felt a "cold sensation … underneath my shirt at my hip area," and thought it was a leaky water bottle. Until he glanced to his left and saw a venomous cobra head making its way underneath his seat.
This isn’t the opening paragraph to an adventure novel, this was real life.
South African pilot Rudolf Erasmus said he had heard from people at the airport "that they saw this cape cobra that was seeking refuge underneath our wing of the aircraft and had a suspicion that it crawled into the engine cowling."
A search of the plane turned up nothing, "so we assumed the snake had gotten out and went on his merry way," he said. We all know what assume means.
Fast forward 30 minutes and that’s when Rudolf felt the quote/un-quote cold sensation. Now this was a small 5-passenger Cesna-style aircraft, not a commercial airline meaning no place to hide.
I’m surprised with such a small cockpit there was room for the pilot and his huge set of gonads.
This was just like that movie! Pulp Fiction!
Here are a few more that didn't make the cut, but the link will be in the show notes.
Two Women Blast Music, Dance And Drink At Their Seats While Passengers Suffer
American Airlines Passenger Urinates On Seatmate After Argument
Family sues cruise company for letting man's corpse decompose in drink cooler for 6 days
The TSA, Bear Spray And A Janitor Cause Evacuation Of Nashville Airport
There you have it episode 188, the April crazy travel roundup is in the books.
If you want detailed show notes, links and pictures head over to podpage.com/travel-stories/
Or visit Substack at travelstories.substack.com/
You can also leave me a message on Anchor, or shoot me an email at TravelFrick@gmail.com.
As I always say, travel safe, stay safe, and thanks for listening.
The April Crazy Travel Roundup - Travel Stories, Episode 188