I Will Never Learn My Lesson
December 12, 2007 – 11:02 amLaGuardia Airport and I are sworn enemies. I wish that airport would just fall into the East River. Actually, I don’t, because then it would make the delays even worse at JFK. Despite the fact that I’ve heard horror stories about JFK from everyone on the face of the earth, I have never had a flight leave more than 10 minutes late from there in all my years of flying.
Last February, after ten consecutive delayed flights, one particular nightmare experience, and many hours in an airport terminal with no services, I swore I would never fly out of LaGuardia again. But any savvy New York flyer knows that as much as you’d like to, you pretty much can’t avoid LaGuardia. When I flew to Chicago last month, the flights out of LGA were cheaper and the times worked better for me. And, miraculously, on my eleventh time flying out of LaGuardia, my flight left on time. My return flight arrived early. Sure, it may just be because I flew out of the weird, remote, and kind of creepy Marine Air Terminal, but it restored my faith that sometimes, albeit rarely, a flight from LaGuardia can leave on time (but then it just sits on the runway for an hour, waiting in a line of 25 planes to take off).
Tomorrow, I fly out of LaGuardia again. And thanks to the combination of (a) flying out of LaGuardia and (b) tomorrow’s forecast of an ice storm, I’m willing to bet on another delayed flight, even though I changed my reservation this morning to take the second-earliest flight possible out of the airport. (Hello, 4:30am wake-up call!) If by some miracle, my flight gets out on time, I will have a four-hour layover in Chicago, and it won’t be late enough to drink.
So, if you hear about some guy in O’Hare going crazy and pulling a Carol-Anne Gotbaum tomorrow (too soon? too soon?), you’ll know who to blame: LaGuardia Airport.
6 Responses
It’s never too early to drink in an airport.
By brookLyn gaL on Dec 12, 2007
I agree with above. I always try to get bumped so I can sit around and drink even longer.
By Ryan on Dec 12, 2007
Chris,
I’d love to hear about the LaGuardia nightmare experience. Didn’t see a link to it so maybe you haven’t blogged it yet/too lazy to look for it.
By TROiSi on Dec 12, 2007
When crossing time zones, it’s perfectly alright to say, hey…it’s happy hour somewhere! Good luck on getting out on time and drink up!
By Paul on Dec 12, 2007
TROiSi: See this post, where I describe every single one of my nightmares at LaGuardia.
By Chris on Dec 12, 2007
I regularly have to fly out of LGA to go to O’Hare, and have started planning my arrivals to be about 3 hours before I actually have to be somewhere in order to account for the inevitable delays.
Then, at the other end, I book flights *later* than the time I think I will get to the airport because the traffic to O’Hare is often so crappy. Then, if I do get there on time, I fly standby on an earlier flight (AA lets you do this).
It’s all incredibly ridiculous and time-consuming.
By Gwin on Dec 12, 2007