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Sense of Direction

Flights Up and Down

June Donohue
Posted 6/17/22

Two friends of mine, who are not crazy about flying anyway, had to take trips by air recently. One of them was going to a family wedding, and the other was duty bound to go to settle the estate of …

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Sense of Direction

Flights Up and Down

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Two friends of mine, who are not crazy about flying anyway, had to take trips by air recently. One of them was going to a family wedding, and the other was duty bound to go to settle the estate of her sister who had recently died.

My friend, Joan was flying from Newark to Johnson City, Tenn. with her brother, by Delta to take care of their sister’s estate. They went by way of Asheville, N.C. to avoid a five or six hour layover. But then that flight got canceled so instead of returning on Wednesday morning, they returned Thursday night. The airline did put them up at a hotel for one night, and gave them each a $100 voucher for a future flight. Back in the day, when I was flying up and down, I would get a free round trip ticket for anywhere in the U.S. if a flight was canceled.

Also in the good old days, there were no worries about people on the plane not wearing masks.

When Joan got back home she got COVID, but since she was vaccinated and boosted, her symptoms were very mild. Now about my friend Gail, who was attending a family wedding in Chicago. Luckily, none of her flights were canceled but she had a different set of troubles. Her plane of choice was United which was supposed to arrange pick up for her to the airport. The service United chose was Lyft, but Lyft let her down, because they never showed up. Gail called for another Lyft and that driver did show up, but he claimed he wasn’t allowed to go out of the county and the airport was in another county. Gail then called Uber, and that third driver did take her to the airport. She got there just 10 minutes before her flight was scheduled to leave, instead of the two hours required. She was lucky enough to board in time, but not so lucky when she got home as she also got COVID and despite all the precautions she had taken, she got much sicker than Joan did.

I have decided not to take any trips by plane for a while, but only by ones remaining on the ground. I intend to keep my head out of the clouds.

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