Baggage Handler Shutdown, December 26, 2004, by Larry Jabusch

From MemoryArchive

Who: Larry Jabusch
What: Baggage Handler Shutdown
When: December 26, 2005
Where: Pittsburgh International Airport

“To tell you the truth people, this just isn’t a very well run airline.” Not necessarily something you want to hear the pilot say right before you take off, but if you were flying on USAir the weekend after Christmas in 2004 you knew what he was talking about. The friendly skies were a tangle of lost luggage and delayed flights because of a problem with the baggage handlers. My flight was delayed for an hour and a half because of this problem, and another ten minutes for deicing. Of course, when I got to Pittsburgh and found out I missed my flight, they said it was due to the weather, not the poor management of the airline, so they wouldn’t comp my room. All there was left to do was get loaded.

I made my way to the airport hotel so I could pay for my own damn room and hit up the bar. Pittsburgh International, like most airports, is a very antiseptic place. Most flights had left for the night so it was virtually empty. That gave it the feel of a mausoleum, if mausoleums had fluorescent lighting and Sbarro. Their moving walkways allowed lazy people like me to make their way through it without having to exert physical energy. I made my way through the maze of gray carpet, glass exteriors and escalators to the hotel, where I promptly booked a room.

The bar in the airport hotel was still open and I started sucking down Bud Lights like there was no tomorrow. Actually, tomorrow was going to be pretty important; I’d have to catch a red-eye flight to Washington and manage to get to American by 9:00 for the start of the Lobbying Institute. Thanks a lot, USAir. The people at the bar had similar horror stories, and we bonded over booze and a Sunday night football game. I was going to have a rough day tomorrow, and there was no way I was facing it without a headache.