Bad day for Air Travel

I seldom talk about my work life in my blog. It's one of those things where I don't want to risk saying anything that would be taken the wrong way by the company I work for. I like my company. Not because they pay me well, or provide security and benefits, but because I like what I do. This is a rarity in the airline business. With so many carriers cutting pay and benefits it's hard to find a company that is thriving. I'm one of the lucky ones. I've worked for 2 other airlines. The first was bought out and stopped flying to the airport I worked at. The second went bankrupt. My Dad worked 34 years at an airline and then was laid off when they went bankrupt and closed down. That is never far from my mind when I think about where I work. He loved his airline too.
Last week was a rough week for the traveling public in the Northeastern part of the US. Hundreds of flights were canceled and flights were delayed. Passengers misconnected, flights were rerouted, airports were snowed under and havoc rippled across the system. Try as we may to accommodate everyone, it became an impossible task. Later flights were already full with other passengers so we were forced to move forward and try and get the system back to normal as quickly as possible to keep from impacting passengers traveling later in the week. I read about passengers stuck on aircraft for 9-10 hours. I'm sure it was horrible to be on one of those flights. I assume the airline was trying everything it could to remedy the situation, but that wouldn't matter to those on board. I'm thankful none of our flights were in that position. I do know that we worked our butts off to try and get people to where they were going. I spent hours trying to reroute 40 Customers going to Tampa knowing that they had vacation plans they probably made weeks ago. I found a way to get them there that same day but it was a long day for them. I hope they were able to enjoy the rest of their vacation. We had to cancel flights into several airports for the day due to weather conditions. Anyone on those flights would most likely have to refund their tickets. Hopefully they understand and could see for themselves why we couldn't operate. Two days later our system has recovered. Those 3 days were taxing for everyone who worked to take care of the Customers and flights. This happens a few times a year. Hurricanes, snow storms, and fog all force airports to close down or flights to cancel. It's a part of the airline business. What I think makes my airline special is that we really do empathize with the customers we fail to get to their destinations, and we try our best to get them there when we can. Even if it's an all day affair, at least the option is there for our customers when possible.

The Valentines Date

This year my wife Robin had the idea of taking the kids out for Valentines day to the bowling alley for some family fun. I wasn't exactly on board with the idea, but since I couldn't come up with a reasonable alternative I decided to go with it. What a great time we had! The place we went to had a kids option so when it was their turn to bowl, little gates popped up on the sides of the alley so the ball wouldn't go into the gutter. The place was under a blacklight so any white clothing seemed to glow. Little did I know that my wife can bowl pretty well. Well enough to smoke me in the first game. Sara would take the ball (with our help) walk up to the line, and give it a little toss that was more like a "drop with intent". The ball would take about 2 minutes to reach the pins and I thought on more than one occasion that it may just hit the pin and stop.
On the turns I helped her we would both crouch down after releasing the ball and help the ball down the alley by blowing as hard as we could. She loved the game and actually got 2 strikes. On one strike the pins fell so slowly the machine didn't register the strike (of course we corrected the score for her). Connor was getting better and better every time. He would switch from the lighter ball he shared with Sara to using Robin's ball because he wanted to be like us.
After the ball was on it's way down the alley he would dance and jump around. We played for 2 hours and the date was a great time for all. As for me, the date was a great time sharing the Day of Love with those I Love.