What's Wrong With This Picture?

Just a simple shot, out the window at Philadelphia’s airport. Taken yesterday shortly before boarding a flight home to St. Louis area. This trip turned into another horrible airplane commute, which is getting closer to “the norm” than the exception. We boarded on time, backed away from the gate on time, and then got in line. A full hour later, we had worked our way up to #3 for take-off. That’s when the pilot got on the intercom and announced a traffic-hold headed west. We pulled out of line, drove to a far corner of the tarmac and shut the engines. And waited…………

We finally got airborne after another hour, “only” 2 hours behind schedule. At least I didn’t have to worry about connections this time, I had a direct flight.

This is at least the 4th time in the past 5-6 months I’ve spent over an hour locked on a parked airplane. The worst was 4.5 hours. That’s probably ½ of the round-trips with significant delays coming or going. And there’s few things that irritate me more than sitting locked in a cramped airplane, wondering when (or if) we’ll get on our way. This is why I prefer to drive.

Meanwhile, the key to the photo above is the lonely piece of luggage sitting in the middle of the tarmac. See below. About 10-15 minutes after I noticed it, a passing tram picked it up. But I have no idea how long it sat there. Somebody probably had a worse trip than I did!