Flying with roosters and Veronica Electronica!

This morning I flew from Tampa to Seattle via Dallas, and there are three things I feel the need to mention. One’s a first for me, one was hilarious, and one was awesome.

cock-a-doodle-doo, cock-a-doodle-doo, cock-a-doodle-doo

My flight was at 6:25AM this morning, which for me is the middle of the night. Whenever I book a flight that early I just pull an all nighter, and this was no exception. As I settled into my seat I heard roosters crowing. I figured I was just extremely exhausted and going nuts, and assumed it was just some part of the aircraft making weird noises (much like the Airbus 320 can make a “barking dog” noise).

But nope, we were carrying roosters in the cargo hold. The flight left right before sunrise, so the roosters were crowing all the way to the runway. One passenger joked “looks like we’ll have a real egg dish on an airplane for once instead of that powder stuff.”

Being an Executive Platinum in coach doesn’t suck… that much

One of the things American does extremely well (in my experience at least) is how they treat Executive Platinum members in coach. I’ve only been in coach a handful of times on American, though without exception I’ve proactively been offered a free drink and/or snack and thanked for my loyalty. In today’s case I was seated in the coach bulkhead row, and the flight attendant said “Are you Mr. Lucky?” I said I was, and she thanked me for being an Executive Platinum and asked me if I wanted anything to drink or eat. I thanked her but declined, and she insisted that if I wanted something later I should let her know. When I later went to the restroom she remembered me and said “how about that free snack now?”

Ultimate we’re talking about a $5 snack here, but it creates so much goodwill and almost makes me feel like I’m being treated better than when I fly first class.

Wrong side of the curtAAin

Veronica Electronica

Usually I hate flight attendants that make jokes over the PA. They’re funny for infrequent flyers, but for someone that’s a frequent flyer they’re the same jokes recycled over and over. On today’s flight Dallas based Debbie (I know that really narrows it down in Dallas, doesn’t it?) had some of the funniest boarding announcements I’ve ever heard. I know some of y’all will say “how unprofessional,” but it was her delivery that made them epic (which makes me wonder why I’m even bothering to share them here).

For example, people weren’t stepping out of the aisle and into their rows fast enough during boarding, so she said “folks in case you weren’t aware we actually have a layover in Seattle, so we’re anxious to get there fast. We’re not kidding around.” It was all in her delivery.

Then a few minutes later she said “folks, the lady standing at the door has been telling me her life story for five minutes now because the line hasn’t moved. Please make it stop.” Laughs were had by all.

Then towards the end she said “don’t worry, I won’t be like this the whole flight,” at which point the male flight attendant in the rear of the aircraft got on the PA and said “she’s lying.” They each made another couple of jabs at each other over the PA before calling it quits.

Though the highlight had to be that she said she doesn’t use the honor system when it comes to turning off cell phones, and she would assume the alter ego of Veronica Electronica to be sure everyone’s electronic devices would be turned off.

She was simply awesome.