They REally Are EVerywhere

sigh.
Sitting in the Atlanta airport Saturday - a three hour delay on a 40 minute flight; I coulda rented a car and DRIVEN for crissake. But, as usual, people talked to me.

This guy HAD to get to California; a town was running on a backup generator and it would fail by Monday. He flew into Atlanta from Mobile Alabama on Friday morning. Friday afternoon the storms came in, and his flight was cancelled. He got another at 8 pm, got on the flight, started taxiing out - and then the pilots came on the intercom, said that there had been a miscalculation, and that they could't fly because they had too many hours in. So the plane taxis back to the airport, everyone has to get off. What happens next? Delta decides that the weather is "an act of God" and that all they owe these folks is a $7 voucher for Saturday breakfast. So this engineer spends 38 hours in the Atlanta airport. When I left him he was supposed to fly out in 15 minutes - at 9 PM on a Saturday night. All of the motels in Atlanta were booked, of course.

OK, so - WHY doesn't the airport have motels around for airline use, or at least block rooms when this sort of thing happens? WHY are they allowed to say that their incompetence at 1) not knowing what their pilots' hours are and/or 2) not having backup pilots is AN ACT OF GOD?

But you don't dare say a damned thing. Since 9/11, the airlines have ceased to become a service industry; now they are an arm of the Federal government, which means that the only service you get is the type a stallion does to a mare. Say something, and they will shut the ticket office down and walk off the job. Get the least bit testy, and they can have you arrested and Federally charged. Think that you still have rights and freedoms, and this is still a free market enterprise system? Go into an airport.