DCA-MIA-EZE Day 0
Chcking my flight…delayed. Why am I not surprised? American Airlines is acalling me every 10 minutes with an update and my flt is 10 min later each time. I finally leave for the airport hoping to catch the later flight which is now earlier than my own. I ask Alex at the AA counter for an upgrade it being my birthday and all. He says no but will change me for free to the later flight from Miami since I may not make the connection. Great. Do it – last thing I want is for my bag to be chasing me around Buenos Aires. Flight is later, later, really late but we take off and land with 20 minutes to spare for the original flt but I am glad I changed because my bag will certainly make it now. The whole 6 degrees of separation never works for me, I have about 3 and true to it on this trip – Turns out, through a strange series of events, I know the first officer on this flight so I chat with him for a bit and then head out to meet up with 2 other people from the trip converging on the airport around this time.
One guy has a business class ticket so a very nice manager lets us all bum on his ticket and hang out in AA Admiralty Club. My first new experience of the trip – First time in an airline club! swanky. We mosey to the gate where we encounter…a delayed flight. Mx. We finally board and there is a major incident around my seat which reminds me why I did not like Argentines the last time I was there but I am bloacking out the negative. We get an announcement that they are still loading bags but Captain does not see how it would be more than 15 minutes before we are off. 30 min later, Captain is back on the mike…”we have a problem” The cage of a dog in the cargo hold is broken and they are working on how to secure it but dont worry, if its your dog, we still have it. Oh that is reassuring. The Argentine woman besdie me is befuddled “Que? Que? what is he saying?” In my best Spanish days I had enough vocubulary to muddle through things. Today, not so much. What ended up coming out was “the dog is broken”. The woman was befuddled and I started chuckling. I tried to elaborate – the dog was broken under the plane but it was not helping. Finally, the flight attendent came on to translate and the woman understood though she launched into a tirade about perros. Another 20 minutes later, Captain came on to say we have a “travesty on our hands” uh oh. that did not sound good. He goes on to elaborate that there is dry ice ion the cargo hold that was loaded in with the dogs but it was not suppoed to be because it is dangerous so they need to move the dry ice or the dogs and they are going to have to sort it all out and Captain seems downright annoyed as he should be. What?? Really? I look at the woman beside me and laugh. No way am I trying to translate dry ice! Lo and behold, 2 hours late, we are off to fly south of the equator.
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dunlewey
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