As some of you know I went to Austin for training Monday.  My plane going out to Texas lost power to one of the engines while pulling out from the gate thus losing power to the cabin.  On my way to the hotel from the airport, my shuttle hit a bird in flight while on the highway.

They say things come in three…here is my third:

Wednesday, I left on time at 8:00 pm from Austin for a 30 minute connecting flight to Dallas.  We were hovering in the sky over the Dallas airport but could not land due to a fast oncoming thunder storm.   In the addition to depleting fuel supply, we were forced to fly back to Austin to refuel.  We took off from Austin around 9pm…again, and my connecting flight from Dallas to Kansas City had been delayed to 10:30pm.  The thunderstorm caused lots of delays, and our plane to KC was coming from Oklahoma and was last in line to refuel and take off from Oklahoma runways, and so we were delayed for lift off back to KC till 12:40 am.  Apparently the plane didn’t leave Oklahoma till 12:45 am, so our flight was delayed again to 2:00 am… 2:15 am…. then at 2:30 am.

While waiting overnight at the Dallas airport, an announcement was made informing us that at 1:30 in the morning the entire airport will be testing their emergency alarm system. So from 1:30 am to 2:00am, there was continuous blaring of sirens and emergency announcements.  I could barely here the person in front of me.  Oh ya, on top of that no free internet connection.

The plane finally landed in Dallas at 1:45 am, however, due to working union policies, pilots and flight attendants were allowed to work a certain amount of hours.  Our original crew expired and they had to scramble and put together another flight crew.  We couldn’t board the plane till the entire crew has been assembled.  We waited on the first officer to show up till 3:00 am.

As our plane was pulling away from the gate at 3:17 am and the captain was making his usual announcements when suddenly the power in the entire plane shut down.  This was different from the first power failure I experience on my way to Texas because the engine had completely gone down as well.  We had to be taxied back to the gate and wait while they ran tests and restarted the engines.  We flew to Kansas City in the dark because the power in the cabin never came back on.  I didn’t land in Kansas City till 6:30 am this morning.

If you were wondering what airline it was, it was American Airlines.  What can I say, it was one of those nights…or mornings.