Well, it was a turboprop engine plane. And we were trying to leave. Ithaca was just getting in the way, as usual. I normally have no need to fly out of Ithaca’s one-building, three-gate airport, since flying home takes more time and is more expensive than bussing or driving. In this case, however, I wasn’t going home. I was headed to Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon for my first grad school visit. It was also my first time flying by myself.
Due to the wide array of flights leaving Ithaca’s airport (all eight of them per day), I had been booked for a 6 am flight to Newark. After a one hour, twenty minute layover, I would proceed to Pittsburgh, hopefully arriving at 10:22 am. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.
The morning started fine enough. I got up at 4 in the morning after three hours or so of sleep thanks to good life choices, had breakfast, and took a cab to the airport, arriving before 5. Since I hadn’t flown alone or been to the Ithaca airport before, I wanted to get to the airport early to make sure I didn’t get lost or anything. You’d have to try pretty hard to get lost in the Ithaca airport. Once you get through security, you can see all the gates at the same time.
Security took approximately two minutes, then I sat down to wait for my flight to board. Meanwhile, the flight to Philly was cutting weight so they could fly in the marginal weather – it was early March with the temperature right around freezing, with some nice sleet/rain/snow coming down. Half of the twenty plus passengers were being left behind in Ithaca. Fortunately, for whatever reason (larger plane, leaving fifteen minutes later, not carrying rocks in the cargo bay, don’t ask me), my flight was leaving at full capacity. Unfortunately, at the time we were scheduled to take off we were still sitting inside the airport.
When we boarded, the first thing we noticed was that it was quite possibly colder inside the airplane than outside. We had apparently lost out on the coin toss for the airport’s single plane heater. While we waited for the airport’s single deicer, our friendly air steward informed us that the earlier delay was to wait for the airplane computers to warm up enough to work. Thanks, Ithaca.
Fifteen minutes before we were supposed to have arrived in Newark, we took off from Ithaca. The flight went smoothly, and forty-five minutes after taking off, we landed in Newark around 8. Great, I thought. I still had almost an hour to catch my connecting flight. Then I looked out the window and couldn’t see the airport. For the next fifteen minutes, we taxied in circles before we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere where we would be picked up by a bus to be driven to the airport terminal. For the fifteen minutes after that, I waited on the bus while the rest of the flight collected checked luggage. We finally got everyone on board the bus and were about to drive off when a very helpful passenger yelled, “Wait! Is that someone’s suitcase?” and pointed out the window at a large yellow suitcase sitting forlornly between the plane and the bus. “Yes!” another very relieved passenger yelled, running to collect the suitcase. At least she was running.
By this time, it was nearing 8:30 and I was running out of hope that a “Your flight has been delayed” message would magically appear on my phone. We drove in circles across the same concrete we had just taxied across and were about to drive through a tunnel between two buildings when we were cut off by a luggage truck. Trailing about nine thousand luggage carts behind it. After that passed, we finally reached our drop off point and I took off.
It was 8:36. My next flight was supposed to take off at 8:53, which meant that boarding technically ended at 8:38. At 8:38, I walked up to Gate 16. The sign behind the gate very helpfully informed me that the flight to Texas, or Hawaii, or somewhere that was not Pittsburgh was Now Boarding. I looked down at my boarding pass. My flight was at Gate 18. Two gates down, the boarding area was empty. But. The ticket agent was still there. At 8:39, she let me and a few others making the same connecting flight board.
And then we sat there for an hour getting deiced and taxiing in circles. After my first flight of the morning, I was just glad to be sitting there at all. We touched down in Pittsburgh at 10:40 am, and after another forty-five minute drive, we pulled up to the hotel, elapsed travelling time seven hours. Google maps tells me that without traffic, I could have made the entire drive from Ithaca in five hours and four minutes.
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