I get up @ 330am, get ready for the morning and stop to pick up breakfast hoping that my day is going to be swell. I clock in on time, Josh and I are ready to go and like clock work, everything works out, all passengers are checked in, bags are ready to load. I pre-board, then I get a call from Garrett. Stop boarding because we have a maintenance issue. Ok. Then, I have a passenger who checks in online, goes through security late and has an oversize carryon. Are you for real? I ripped him a new one and tell him his bag is being checked to his final destination. Don't touch your bag. Seriously people. You don't want to encounter me on a flight that is not only delayed because of maintenance, but to bring an oversize carryon. Go home people! Garrett comes up takes the bag. I make an announcement that boarding is delayed due to this maintenance issue. Passengers are quiet because this other passenger just pissed me off so they are pretty mellow at this point. Time? 06:15am. I do what I do, rebook passengers. It's the part of my job that I hate because I know it's inconviniencing people. We send passengers to Monterey, Santa Barbara and the farthest was San Jose just so that they can make it to their final destinations. Some people have called customer service and rebooked themselves on different airline carriers. We've offered some passengers brunch @ the local restaurant. Except for one passenger whose friend was yelling @ her to get to Newark, NJ (passenger hands her cellphone to my co-worker Josh, starts yelling @ him, he tells friend that she needs to stop yelling, put the phone down for a few minutes and gets back on the phone and ask her, are you done yelling yet? he explains what is going on and everything is fine.) Yes, this is what we deal with everyday. The special people.
I go downstairs to check up on what is going on. Tired of standing at the balcony with all these eyes on me waiting for me to get word from my radio that we are clear to board. I talk to the flight attendants, talk to my co-workers. Then the bad news. We couldn't leave because the plane is broken. I go back up stairs, Josh and Nicole are heading up to help rebook. All the passengers on board are deplaned and headed back through security. We are talking about 86 people here with destinations that range from Phoenix to Cancun, one man was going to London, Ontario, Canada. I didn't know that place even existed. Thinking that his flight may cancel, we think ahead and start rebooking out of different airports. I'm stuck @ the gate, with about 15 to 20 people looking me and probably saying I'm next. I started going down a list but when the ticket counter opened, most people went out of security. It was a long drawn out 4 hours of rebooking. Josh and I are drinking Monster energy drinks for some added boost and by the time I got there, Josh was on his second one. Our breakfast is in the breakroom. No one has touched it. Rebooking passengers, retagging bags, 2 planes on the ground and 5-6 people working this show with about 110 passengers needing to still get to a destination. Why hasn't this been recorded yet. No, not like Airline, or whatever that show was. Just raw video footage of employees in action like this. This doesn't happen everyday. I hope I didn't jinx this one. It's the story of our life @ the airport. There are probably more extreme stories that have been told. To all of US, at the end of the day, we laugh about it. It's stored in the memory and revisted when we start talking about random airline chargin.
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