On my way home last week, I got an earlier flight from Houston to Tulsa than I originally planned.
It was Mesa Airlines doing business as United. A nice airplane has engines under the wings. A hillbilly airplane has engines attached to the fuselage near the tail and two seats on each side of the plane. When the engines rev up, there’s a certain point at which you can feel the flying cylinder shaking, and you wonder if the contraptions are about to become detached.
But I was thankful to be going home after a two-hour layover. Originally, I had an eleven-hour layover. I’m so grateful I was able to get a sooner flight. I could have hugged the gate agent, but I refrained.
Upon reaching my row, I shuffled around, stuffed my carry-on below the seat in front of me, and sank into the narrow chair.
The flight attendant’s voice came over the intercom, “Good afternoon, welcome to flight 6353, and thank you for joining us for this flight today.”
“You are in good hands with our two pilots, uh, I don’t know their names. I’ve never met them. However, you can rest assured we will make it to Tulsa today.”
I glanced at the man beside me, but he was already asleep.
Fifteen minutes into the flight, she said, “Folks, please be aware that we do not have WiFi available for this flight today. I repeat, we do NOT have WiFi available.”
Ten minutes later, she said, “Folks, we DO have WiFi for this flight today. You can connect now.”
I glanced around. No one seemed to believe this was abnormal. Every other flight attendant on every other flight that weekend had known what was on the flight before they announced anything.
Thirty minutes later, she said, “We will not have food or beverages on this flight. It’s only an hour and fifteen-minute flight, so we don’t have time for distributing food or beverages.”
Ten minutes later, she announced, “I will be coming by with drinks in a few minutes.”
I looked around the plane. No one seemed to notice the contradiction of all these announcements. I wondered if I was losing it. Was I in the Twilight Zone?
Not only did she serve beverages, but she also gave us a complimentary Biscoff cookie.
I was confused. If I’d had a parachute, I might have said, “Hey, can you open that door to the wild blue yonder? I’ll just land somewhere and hike the rest of the way.”
It was apparent she didn’t know much about what this plane offered.
We landed, and as I walked off the plane, I noticed every single person from that plane had gathered in a line at one side of the jetway as if they were all getting on the airplane again. I’ve never seen that before.
I walked through the terminal and found my wife waiting for me on the other side of the exit. And we engaged in an inordinate amount of PDA.
to anyone coming home,
– Caleb
caneymountainblog.com 