Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Alaska Airlines Flight 871 from Honolulu to Honolulu

I got up at 5:30 this morning to pick up some friends at the airport. They said to wait until they called from the airport. It's only ten minutes away. So I checked my cmputer to see if they had landed already.




Hmm, that doesn't look good. I start thinking all these evil thoughts about Alaska Airlines. How can they strand people in Hawaii in the middle of the night? Boy, all those things people are saying about how Alaska Airlines is going down hill is really true. Etc.

About 7:30, TE called from Honolulu. They took off. About an hour out, there was a medical emergency and returned to Honolulu. They waited to get some medical equipment so the passenger could go. But it was the middle of the night and it took a couple of hours to arrive. But, by then, the pilots wouldn't arrive in Anchorage in time to meet the legal requirements about how long they can be on a shift. That was the gist of his message.

Hmmmm. There I was jumping to conclusions when the story was totally different. But it raises other issues. I have no idea what medical supply they needed for the patient (or even if I have that part of the story right). I don't know what the passenger needed, I can think of an oxygen tank as an example. I will assume that the passenger with the medical issues did everything right to prepare for the flight. But when they got back to Honolulu, and they got close to the deadline to leave within the pilots' legal time to get to Anchorage, it seems that leaving the one person in Honolulu and taking the rest on their trip would be the way to go. Now the one person, plus everyone else, missed the flight.

But, of course, there is surely more to the story.

5 comments:

  1. I wonder about that to. Like, why didn't that person offer to get off the plane and let everyone fly up?

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  2. or HEEL? Yeah, I thought about that. Do you think people who change their names are touchier about these things?

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  3. Let's see... People who change their names feel strongly enough about their sense of identity and/or affiliation to change their names to refect that. For both TOE and me, our new names represent a dedication to our family, albeit different aspects. In my case, I went through a court process that cost several hundred dollars, spent weeks of spare time chasing down official forms and updating all sorts of records, and have now spent four years gently (or not-so-gently) reminding people, many of whom assume that their opinion of my name change is more important than my own when it comes to observance. That's a pretty high level of commitment to my new name and I appreciate it when people respect that effort by using it.

    It isn't the same situation as frequently misspelled names (SEO?), since friends and family are more likely to make mistakes, not less likely. Also, a difficult name isn't necessarily the result of a deliberate decision, whereas a new name almost always is. I have a fair amount of sympathy for people who are try to remember, but slip up frequently. I'm grateful they try. On the other hand, there are those who insist "That's who you are to me and I'm not going to change that." To me, that's a sign of someone who feels affection but has little respect for me.

    So yes, I think people who change their names are touchier about these things. If we didn't care, why would we bother changing them in the first place?

    ReplyDelete

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