Does Not Include Customer Service

Well I’m on the plane at least.  This might be a brief wait or we might just sit here for hours and hours.  This plane should have departed precisely one hour and fifty-nine minutes ago.  I knew it would be late.  That’s to be expected.  The question is: how late?  I had some bad, over-salted Chinese food and the same brand of wine I used to drink when Concho Y Toro seemed like a bargain on Pitt St.  I sat it out to the end, texting with a safari company, as it were, then rushed to the plane, cutting through security: “it’s already boarding, it’s already boarding.” Onward and through, down the Pudong domestic escalator and out into cross in the “T” where it’s all left or right for gates innumerable.  Good, right here, right down below, we’ll be bussing out to this plane and no one is in line. They told me, what I already knew.  We weren’t going anywhere.

I killed an hour on a conference call and returned. “We’ll likely need another hour.”  Enough time for some emails and a beer.  This time another Air China gent suggested he’d need another hour and I let slip that this was absurd and that his company was ridiculous.  Then a woman began to bark.  There can be no more fitting verb to describe the means by which she communicated with the crowd. She barked again in Chinese that this flight was now going to Beijing.  But it is only the Air China flight that is going.  “You people for Hainan airlines, you are not boarding this plane.  Do you hear me?  Do you hear me?  You are not going anywhere.”  Tough on you guys, but I’ve got an Air China ticket and this would suggest we might soon leave.

This pilot is doing his job, which does not include customer service. “We are flying at ten thousand meters and you may experience some turbulence.”  Aren’t you going to grovel and tells us the airline is ever so sorry for the three-hour delay and appreciates our business, and appreciates that we have a choice among carriers?  No.  Nothing like that.  He appreciates that we don’t have much choice and is not on the hook for grovelling.   Everyone is up now.  The turbulence is indeed strong.  Oh, the train.  Next time, the train.  

We land.  My phone dies.  I must keep pressing keys on my lap top so it will continue to charge. The luggage is late.  Another plane’s load arrives and grabs luggage and leaves.  Downstairs the cab queue is longer than usual at this hour.  No one, including myself looks particularly attractive.  The train.  Next time, the train.

Thursday 6/8/17