Another Great Airplane Experience

This particular brush with death was in the 1990 or 1991 timeframe.  My wife and I were flying United from a week's vacation in San Francisco down to San Diego.  San Diego is about an hour and a half south of our home, much further than the local airport only twelve miles away, and indeed further than Los Angeles International Airport.  But I avoid LA as much as possible, and the fare differential between San Diego and the much smaller and pricier local airport (John Wayne) made the drive worthwhile.

I don't remember much about the actual flight, so presumably it was fairly routine, with severe fuselage-stressing turbulence, strange little gremlins prying up the engine covers, and the like.  Nothing remarkable.  But eventually it came time for the meal.  And they came over the intercom announcing a new frontier in food service, a "serve yourself" policy.  No, this wasn't like the great United DC-10 buffets in the 1970s, where a lavish buffet table was opened up for passengers to walk over and create their own sandwiches.  Instead, a large wicker basket of food was handed to a passenger in the front row on each side of the aisle, who was instructed to take something and hand the wicker basket to the next person.   I guess we could call it the "ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall" method of distribution: take one down and pass it around.

Eventually the basket came over the back of the row ahead of me, and it was time to take the food.  "Got any chicken Kiev there?"  "No, how 'bout some vegetarian lasagna?"  Meanwhile, I suppose the stewardesses, not having to serve anything, were outside on the wing enjoying a cigarette.

We finally neared San Diego, and I could see the runways far below us.  Really far beneath us.  The plane was drastically slowing to land, giving those horrible straining noises that can turn the most seasoned traveler into a quivering mass of Jell-O, and I'd guess we were still above 4000 feet.  I said to my wife, "if I didn't know any better, I'd swear there is no way this plane is going to land at that airport."   She replied with the expected naive pap, words to the effect of "the plane is being flown by a professional pilot, and I'm sure he knows what he's doing."

Then a rather sheepish-sounding voice came over the intercom.  "Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is, uh, your captain.   Uh, we appear to be too high to land the plane."   He concluded, in a really happy and perky tone, "I'll just take her up and around again!"   By this time we were probably about 2 MPH above stall speed and still thousands of feet in the air.  The reader is asked to envision the grotesque noises that a 737 can make when given full power at the point where it is just about ready to plummet out of the sky into the six o'clock news.

Somehow this would-be pilot safely landed on his second attempt, and I oozed out of the plane.  After gathering the luggage, mysteriously not lost, we ambled outside and caught a shuttle to the long term parking lot where we were parked.  The shuttle dropped us near the car.  And then I noticed something disturbing - the passenger door of my car was wide open!  I walked over, figuring I had been vandalized, yet all the stuff that normally is in my car was still there.  And the door was locked, despite being wide open.  I realized what must have happened.  We had probably taken all the luggage out of the car, and then I simply locked the driver's door.  With electric locks, all four doors immediately lock.  Unfortunately, the designers of the car probably assumed that the owner was intelligent enough to close the blasted doors in the first place.

Thus my car had sat for an entire week with the door wide open.  Nobody bothered to close it.  Presumably nobody parked adjacent to me, for the simple reason that they couldn't fit with my door open.  And when a car door is open for a week, the little dome light depletes the car's battery.  Sure enough, the car was dead as a doornail.

So I walked the long distance to the cashier's booth of the parking lot.  "Can anyone here give me a jump start?".  "No, it's not our policy to be helpful - you'll have to call the Auto Club."  Happily I'm a Triple A member.  "Well, may I use the phone?"  "No, you'll have to use a pay phone back in the terminal (about 3/4 mile away)."  It's dedicated, customer-oriented businesses and employees like this that make me Proud To Be An American.  I set off for the terminal.

Have you ever tried to get Triple A to an airport?  They actually came in a reasonable time, say a half hour.  But the airport people had figured out a final means of reaming the customer: I had to pay the hourly parking rate for the tow truck before they would allow it into the parking lot to jump start my car.

The rest of the trip was non-eventful, as the midday drive back home was smooth.  Would you believe that I've never flown from the San Diego airport since that wonderful trip?