On the night of December 19th, 2008 I was flying in back to Dulles, from Cincinatti with a stopover in Charlotte. I was coming back from a great MTConnect Technical Advisors Meeting where we voted through the MTConnect 1.0 Standard. It was a GREAT meeting and a historic day. More about MTConnect later this weekend.
Because of fog, we looped around around Charlotte until the pilot said, we are running out of fuel and need to land in Greenville-Spartansburg. We get to Greenville-Spartansburg and sit on the runway for 45 minutes.
The pilot comes on literally says:
"Folks, when we are grounded for weather related factors, we are not
required to provide housing or transportation. If I were you, I would
get a hotel room. Good luck."
Ah, airline service at its very best...
Luckly for me, I ran into four fantastic people. Vance, who offered to give me a ride to Charlotte. The hero for all of us was Dawn of SAP. Dawn is the highest level of traveler at US-Airways - Chairman Preferred. Thank god for Dawn, she called the Chairman Preferred 800# and got all of us set for flying out to Charlotte the next day. Michael of Oracle got the rental car. All Todd, the exotic car shipper, and I had to do was ride to Charlotte with Michael and Dawn. On the way there, Dawn used her very high level with Marriot to get us a distressed rate of $99 instead of the $169 normal rate.
We all joked that this was like the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles :-) I did joke with Todd that he reminded me of that guy in the movie Something About Mary and the Rest Stop scene. Luckily for me, Todd laughed.
We got to the hotel in time to get in our rooms by 2:00am and I was up at 5:30 heading back to Charlotte to fly out. Luckily for me, everything went well today getting back for Dennis Govon's Farewell Party.
My faith in humanity was lifted last from South Carolina heading to North Carolina with the kindness from Oracle and SAP's employees.
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