We boarded passengers at 9:30pm. Huge storm and lots of lightning shut down airport for hours. We sat at the gate for 4 1/2 hours with passengers onboard.
Because we (the crew) would have become illegal to fly the 9 hr flight to Brazil at 2:10am, Customer Service elected to close the airplane doors and send us off to sit on the runway. Even though there was NO chance of taking off during the storm, this precluded us from "walking" when we became illegal to fly. Their reasoning? If a break in the storm allowed the plane to take off, they wouldn't have been able to find another crew in the middle of the night.
So...as we pointlessly taxied out to sit on a closed runway, there was a loud "POP" and all power on the plane went out. Lights, ovens, coffeemakers, video...nothing. It started up again, thanks to secondary systems, after about 20 seconds. But soon the pilots made the announcement that the suspected lightning strike to the plane had taken out the navigation system.
After two hours sitting on the runway, while pilots worked with mechanics on the phone to try to fix it, the flight was finally cancelled.
We arrived back at the gate at 4am. Passengers who had fallen asleep shortly after boarding were distraught to find themselves still in DC after being on the plane for 6 1/2 hours. The passengers were angry and were verbally abusing the flight attendants as they deplaned. We asked the pilots to come out of the cockpit and stand with us in order to discourage the nasty comments we were getting.
Because this was a reserve call trip (not one of my regular assignments), I will be paid only for two flight hours instead of my entire duty period which was slightly over eight hours. And despite the fact that every other flight attendant on the plane got guaranteed the full value of the entire trip (25 flight hours) because this trip was on their regular schedule (vs. being assigned to me at the last minute to fill in for someone).
I got home at 6am, slept until 4pm, made a grocery run and came home to find that I've been reassigned to a new trip which starts at 5am tomorrow.
Can you just IMAGINE how many cigarettes I would have smoked, and blamed it all on "stress", "anger", "unfairness", "tension", "hassle", "exhaustion", etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum??? IF IF IF I still smoked?
But I don't smoke anymore. I got smart. I learned that smoking fixes NOTHING. Smoking doesn't change a single thing. Oh, wait. Yes, it does. It changes you from being a person who is FREE into a person with a sad, expensive, stinky, embarassing, harmful addiction.
Any EXers in Tampa or Los Angeles? Speak up! Please?
xxxooo, Sky
