Caroline Kennedy

A 'Murphy' Kind of Day
June 25, 2007

Last Thursday evening, as I am packing and getting ready to leave for the Dallas gift market, thunderstorms raged through central New Jersey where I live. Lucky for me, I think to myself, that I am not flying out tonight. I know what thunderstorms can do to flights trying to depart or arrive.

Friday morning and I am up and out before the crack of dawn to catch my 6:50 a.m. flight for Dallas. I have a full schedule set up to hit the ground running as soon as I arrive, starting with one appointment, followed by a press luncheon hosted by the Dallas Market Center in honor of its 50^th anniversary.

I arrive at the airport parking lot and in my haste to pull my computer bag out of the car, grab the wooden handles of my handbag which were sticking out rather than the handles of the case itself. As I lift the bag by the delicate wooden handles the weight of it snaps one of the handles in half. So begins my Murphy kind of day. Right then and there, I should have taken that as an omen of what was yet to come.

I’ve already checked in online, so I proceed through security straight to the gate — only … my flight isn’t posted on the gate’s flight board, some other flight is. Off I go to a monitor to find out where I should be and find that the flight is cancelled! Not having had enough coffee yet to truly wake up, my brain is slow to comprehend, but it finally reaches that “Ah ha!” moment when I come to realize that because of the thunderstorms Thursday night, the “equipment” was probably diverted somewhere else and never got to Newark to be used for my early flight.

There is just one agent at the customer service desk and the line now has at least 15 mildly annoyed people on line. Even with diverted and cancelled flights, the airline has not called upon extra personnel to come into work early or shift over from other positions to handle the customer service problems that these delays cause. It is “business as usual.” After waiting on line for a half an hour, it is finally my turn and the agent blandly tells me (to my horror, as if this is way okay) that I am now confirmed on the 6:15 p.m. flight. Then she adds that I am also on the standby list for all the other flights going out that day, but that they are all booked full and the chances of getting on especially the earlier flights are extremely slim.

I take my boarding pass and stalk off to get some breakfast and then settle in with my computer for the duration. The 8:30 a.m. flight is called, all passengers board, and the standby list is rolled over to the next flight. I call and cancel my Dallas appointments and inform the Pat Zajac at the Market Center that I will be missing the anniversary luncheon. Luckily for me, I have brought plenty to keep me occupied. I plug in, log on and go to work. As it nears time for the noon flight, I get up to make sure that they haven’t changed the gate, because the gate board is not reading correctly, in fact … have their computers gone down? The departure monitors say that it is 9:47 and the time is really 11.

I nearly trip over my boss, Maria Weiskott, who has just arrived. She is scheduled on the noon flight. I tell her my tale of woe (she hadn’t gotten my email). They call the flight and off she goes … well, not quite. They board but do not depart for quite some time; the aircraft has mechanical problems. Is my Murphy karma rubbing off? I settle in and go back to work while awaiting the 3:30 flight, which comes and I and a number of the other standbys get on and off we go … But that is not the end of my story… 

Posted by Caroline Kennedy on June 25, 2007 | Comments (0)