JetBlue has treated me like royalty from the beginning of my trip. In return, I came this close to delaying one of its planes.
It was all an accident, I swear. See, last night, I met up with some of the guys from Wired.com at Oakland International Airport. I had to leave the secure terminal to do it. By the time I finished chatting with my handlers from Wired.com, the security area had been closed for the night. I couldn't get back to the terminal. Uh-oh.
With nowhere else to go, I was forced to spend the night in the baggage claim. It was pretty sparse, and I was looking at being there at least 12 hours. Apparently you can't enter the terminal more than four hours before your flight. One of the last JetBlue ticket agents still on duty came up with a pretty good idea: Put me on standby for an early morning flight to Long Beach, California. That would get me a ticket so I could pass through security as soon as it opened in the morning. I'd get a better place to sleep, keep my original seat on an afternoon flight to Long Beach and everyone's happy.
Until I forgot to tell the morning ticket agents I wouldn't actually be on that morning flight.
So there they were, holding up the flight while furiously paging my name throughout Terminal 1. Of course, I didn't catch it because I was on the phone with a news crew. By the time I heard the page and ran to Gate 9A, a group of irritated JetBlue employees had gathered to greet me.
Oops.
And so, to the passengers and crew of JetBlue Flight 243, I offer my most sincere apologies. It was a mixup in communications, I promise. And to the folks at JetBlue, please don't take away my pass. I haven't had the chance to be racially profiled by the TSA, I haven't grown a decent five o'clock shadow and I haven't broken any of the equipment Wired.com loaned me.
This leads to an important rule to any readers who may plan on visiting me. If your airport doesn't have anywhere for me to sleep and it's the end of the day, you'd better wait until morning to come by. As much as I'd love to stay up all night drinking $8 beers with you, it's not worth trading carpet for concrete to do so. Besides, you probably need to come get an eye-opener, amirite?
OK, gotta go catch my flight to Long Beach. It's an hour-long flight. I'll be there until 6:25 p.m. (PST), when I head up to Seattle for the evening. There's a guy across the room looking between his laptop and me. I think I might go over and talk to him. See you all later.
Editors note: We checked the JetBlue website. Flight 243 left Oakland five minutes ahead of schedule and arrived in Long Beach seven minutes behind schedule. If you were on the plane and you're miffed about being late, take it up with the pilot.
*Photo of our intrepid frequent flier with the crew of Flight 250, which was not late: Brendan Ross / Wired.com
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