So it’s the National Sales meeting trip for my new company, Living Social. My 3rd trip to Washington DC in about 6 weeks. My travel partner and colleague Colm Gent tells me that Virgin Air is the ONLY way to fly, many perks and amenities that most airlines just don’t have. My last two flights, one on United, one on Delta were pretty much cattle car experiences so, I’m looking forward to a better choice on our all day trip to Dulles. The trip there was pretty uneventful, Virgin is one of the new players on the block, so the wait time for our connection in LA is pretty long, we actually get work done at the airport and finally take off for Dulles arriving some 5 hours later, pretty nice plane, very polite employees, overall I’m thinking that Colm is right, great airline, I’m considering going and getting one of their airline credit cards and switching from Alaska Airlines, my airline of choice for over 25 years now.
We finally arrive at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel in downtown Washington DC, a very nice place. Let me add that I’m very impressed with the way Living Social has treated me both during the process of hiring as well as the accommodations at the Westin, Tyson’s Corner and this gorgeous Hotel that they are putting their 400+ sales people at for the 3 night stay during our National Sales meeting. They have flown us all from 5 countries to discuss our global plan for 2011 and meet all the people who are going to make this happen next year. Each and every one of us gets a private room and 1st class all the way. The Sales meeting is to last until mid day Friday, and one of the highlights is the Holiday party at the hotel, where over 600 people celebrate their growth and common goal to take Living Social to the next level next year. It was a great time, great people, and while not trying to brown nose too much, I feel very fortunate to be here, now at this time in the company’s history. I’m ready both physically and mentally for the challenges ahead and look forward to being involved in what promises to be a fantastic year for us. They want the best of the best and are very picky who they hire, and I’m very proud to be one of them.
A new career and challenges for me.
So, this is really where the story begins… As great a time as we all had at the meeting, what we didn’t know what was in store for us getting home. Our original flight was scheduled to leave for SF @ 4:35 eastern time, and with a layover in SFO, we were scheduled to arrive in Seattle @ 11:55 pm getting home around 12:30am or so, which was pretty normal when flying home on a friday night from the east coast.
We should have figured out we were screwed the minute we tried to check in for our flight to SF. I forgot to mention, that with Virgin, the experience in checking in is also so much better, now cattle car lines, you walk right up and they have decorated it nice and there are friendly employees ready to help, and have not been tainted yet by rude travelers. Or at least they appear not to have been tainted. But alas, I spoke too soon, when we check in @ Dulles, were told that because of fog in SF our flight out is delayed for 4 hours, and that were probably not going to make our connection now either because the 9:35 flight our of SFO is the last one of the day. So we ( of course) ask them to please try to book us on another airline, and they decline….. I guess that being the new guys on the block that they don’t have the agreements yet in place with the other airlines in order to accommodate weather related problems, and because it IS a weather related ” act of god” they also cannot get us a hotel in either DC, or SF. Now needless to say, this development is a little disconcerting, we want to get home, and every question or request we ask is turned down. And I think the person at the counter could have delivered this bad news with a little more style.
Now this is the first person I’ve met with this company that was less than helpful and borderline rude to us so after no, no, no…. I say ” Ok, lets stop and get this out-of-the-way right now. Before we go on, is there anything else that you can’t do for us?” Crickets baby… crickets. They won’t, can’t do crap.
Were S.O.L.. and we head for security… Looking back if I had any clue what we were in for in our future, I’d of smiled and walked away. So, as we sit, and sit, we do have the pleasure of meeting up with 3 other of our colleagues that are flying with us to SF, so we enjoy their company before we take off. So we finally board our flight @ around 7:45 or so, taxi on to the runway and sit…..sit…. and sit…. for around 30 minutes while our pilot is awaiting clearance to take off… and take off we finally do heading to SF. Thank god….I think, easy flying home now… although we don’t have a clue what we’ll do when we get to SF, but I’ll worry about that when we get there. I had the pleasure to sit next to a brilliant young woman, Cristina from SF who just took a political job in DC and we had some great conversations discussing her passion and commitment to help our country learn and care about what is happening around us. She had just finished working on the Carly campaign in CA and was quite pleased to be moving to the center of her universe Washington DC. So as we start our approach to SF, the wind really kicks up and the pilot announces that they’ve had quite a few reports of planes having to abort their landings and we’ll try to get in, but it might take a few times. And it’s pretty violent as we make our approach to SFO, we are really getting thrown around a bit, but he gets the plane on the ground and the worst is over….. right????? NOT…. The good news
is that were on the ground safely, and because of how all the Virgin flights have been delayed, our flight to Seattle has also been delayed to a 1:30 am departure time, and by god were getting home tonight!! We couldn’t be happier. We deplane, say good-by to Nicolle and Samara the SF reps for Living Social and go to our gate happy as pigs in …. you know. The wind all along the west coast is pretty bad, but we board, take off get tossed around quite a bit, but get over it and the flight to Seattle is pretty uneventful. Until we get to around 1500 feet or so. That’s when Virgin America Flight #748 from San Francisco to Seattle turned very ugly. All of a sudden, the wind starts turning us into a rag doll. Very bumpy, the pilot turns on the seat belt sign the flight attendants stop walking down the isles, and it starts to get worse. A woman in front of me pushes her flight attendant button, the attendant gets on the intercom system, announcing that who ever has pushed their call button, please turn it off, and turn it on again IF this is a life ening emergency only… well I see her turn it off and then turn it on again… I think… ” holy crap”. So the attendant comes staggering down the aisle, cause were now on a space mountain ride man…. unreal… gets to the woman who announces she has to pee……… UNBELIEVEABLE!!!!! Why are people so friggin dumb!?!?!?!? The attendant says ” NO” and staggers back to her seat at the front of the plane. What we didn’t know on the plane was that Seattle was right in the middle of a huge windstorm, 70 MPH winds were ripping roofs off, toppling trees over and shutting off power to over 125,000 people in the Puget Sound area, we are I’m sure one of the last planes in the air, and the pilot decides that he’ll try to get our plane on the ground here and now. As we travel above downtown for the North to South approach were getting beat up pretty good, and now people start reaching for the barf bags…. O M G….. when one person starts, many follow, now we have people crying, starting to scream a bit and when the puking starts ….. well it’s just not fun. Were getting tossed left, right and everything in between we get to a point were just about to touch down, and a wind gust literally pushes us almost a full runway over, and he hits the gas and were back in the air. Thank god, because our wing was just about scraping the damn runway, but is was the wrong runway and god knows where we were going to end up.
So up, up, up we go and believe me the wind is getting worse now and the barf bags and the passengers are starting to look at each other now wondering if this is the big one, are we going to make it? Along with that comes more stress more concern and yes Irene…. more barf. Well what seemed like hours of pure hell ( only about 15 minutes ) but he goes for it again, and this time we don’t get as close, he comes down, down, down, the whole time the 50 MPH gusts are hitting us directly in our side and the plane is rolling from one side to another, and we cross the highway to Burien, and we take another huge gust, the plane rolls left, and he hits the gas again, and up we go. Now, keep in mind, I was in the Navy, where flights like this were pretty common place, but now I’m wondering what were going to do now, because these winds are not getting better they are getting worse. I”m thinking Portland and can’t imagine trying to land here again, I just want to get on the damn ground. What ever the result people are REALLY scared now as we anticipate having to stay in the air during this windstorm from hell. The pilot gets on the horn and announces that he’s NOT going to try to land at SeaTac again, but we have permission to land @ Boeing Field the winds are not nearly as strong there, and he feels pretty confident that we’ll succeed. Great… go for it man. Just get us the hell on the ground. Now keep in mind while all this is going on, the plane is bouncing around like paper cup in a dryer, I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to lose my two Bailey’s and coffee I downed an hour prior at this point, I look around and most people have their faces in bags, or eyes closed contemplating their demise….. I’m SERIOUS.. It was that bad people…. That bad.. I can’t see Colm behind me but I know how scared I became and I fly pretty well. So as we start our approach to Boeing Field, once again over Downtown Seattle for the 4th or 5th time within the hour, guess what? Yea, that’s right the winds kick up once again and our decent is one from hell, pitch left, pitch right, listen to someone hurl, the flight attendants now are roaming the isles with huge plastic garbage bags that at every isle someone is tossing a full barf bag into, and when the poor gal gets to me with a FULL, garbage bag of puke, I can only shake my head and smile, cause she looks scared as hell the poor thing. What I didn’t know is Colm told me he say one of the flight attendants with THEIR face in a barf bag in the back of the plane during our little flight adventure.
So, down we go once again, and I’ll be damned as he’s just about ready to land a huge gust creams us on the right side and we start to list once again. But he puts it down anyway and after he comes to a stop and people start breathing again, a small applause starts to take over the plane. I can’t believe we made it, but were down… were finally down…. Now Boeing Field is NOT expecting us, they don’t have a runway, baggage handlers and TSA is not going to be happy that were there without the normal security people in place. Therefore it takes us about an hour to get off the plane, there are a few complainers, but mostly people on flight 748 are happy to be alive, and we take it in stride. We finally get to deplane, they walk us a bit, where we get to go through an old terminal and come out in front of the building. No bus, no transportation, no bags.. We don’t care….we just want to get home as it’s now around 5:30 AM or so, and we’ve been up for 24 +hours. Colm and I finally look at each other and just shake our heads with the “can you friggin believe that we lived through this” look. Now the Taxi’s have gotten wind of whats going on and are flocking to Boeing field, and we finally get one, and tell the driver that were going to go to Bellevue, a guy walks up and asks if he can join us because he’s going to Redmond, we say sure, and he gets in. It turns out this is a Groupon engineer that was on the plane with us, our fiercest competitor. Colm had noticed his Groupon printed bag in the waiting area, and whispers it to me as we start leaving in the Cab. So lean over to him in the front seat and ask him where he works, and he says ” a company called Groupon ” I put my hand out and tell him that were with Living Social and he’s shocked but friendly enough. We all have a good laugh how our companies almost had some openings to fill and they drop me off in Bellevue. As we drive through the neighborhood, all the power is off, no lights, and we can see damage from the storm, many downed branches, etc.. I finally get in the door, around 6:00 am or so, the cab takes off to get Colm home and this other guy to his place in Redmond. I find out yesterday from Colm, that his little adventure didn’t stop there, as they had the pleasure of a drunk driver in front of them on 520, bouncing off the divider, swerving lane to lane ets. I can only imagine Colm wondering what could possibly be next? After sleeping in till 2:00 PM and getting another 10 hours last night, I still feel like I’ve been beaten by a baseball bat, but was dedicated to blogging this experience. 
Let me finish this book off by saying that when I was in DC, I was not happy with this airline, I was never going to fly them again. But I’ve changed my mind, once the dust settled, once this pilot, ( I wish I knew his name ) had saved all of our collective asses. Once I realized that this wasn’t anyones fault, but just one of those things that happen in life…. I’m very grateful for another chance to fly them and I will again. What a day…. what a frigging day…
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