Keeping my cool
In normally uncool moments
Yesterday, coming from a work trip from Bengaluru back home to Mumbai, I experienced the worst thing a day trip business traveler can go through at the end of a fulfiling but tiring long day- a flight delay which spins out of control.
After receiving a text message in advance that the flight which was to take off at 7 pm ( which was a comfortable time to get back and not miss the entire day to travel after having woken up at 4 am to catch the morning flight) was delayed by an hour. My heart sank a bit but I quickly adjusted to the reality which was shattered soon enough when I saw another text stating that the delay was now an hour and a half !
I could feel the anger rising. This was the not the flight I had wanted to take in the first place, but somehow the client admin had chosen it again !
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I adjusted again deciding to catch up on Dr. Dre’s new album ( after 16 years) Compton at the airport as I now had 3 hours to kill before the delayed flight.
After a comfortable passing of an hour and a half, I decided to finally check on the actual status of the flight and to my shock found that the delay was now 2 hours. I slumped down into the seat trying to accept the new reality and then I chanced upon a show that I decided to stream on my iPad. That kept me going for an hour till I saw that the delay had now slipped to 3 hours !
Normally, this was the time I would have just exploded and “done” something about it -an angry mail to someone ( to my client ??) but instead decided to have fun with the people around me getting into my “humour mode” instead. The crowd around me was getting extremely angry and I noticed the quiet ushering in of security personnel to the gate to address any “incident” that may develop.
I was however in “joke mode” and ultimately the flight took off almost 4 hours after the scheduled delay with no explanations and very flimsy excuses from the staff as they kept revising the delay in 10 minute increments. This of course angered the public even more but I was happy that it did not affect me as it normally would have because of my shift in mindset.
As a bonus, the pilot got us a half hour earlier than the normal flight time doing his bit to make up I guess. So, net net it wasn’t so bad ! Given that I had a morning meeting to attend right after this all night escapade, I am even more impressed with the handling :)
