LVIA (Lehigh Valley International Airport, formerly known as ABE, short for Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton) . . . turns out they have free Wifi. Excellent for when your flight has been delayed 3 hours and it is now 40 minutes away from the new flight time . . . and no one has boarded, nor are there any staff around who look like they could begin the boarding process. But hey. I can check my email for free! That makes up for it.
I suppose on the bright side, the longer my flight is delayed, the less time I'll have to spend in Detroit airport for my layover waiting for my connecting flight. I got to spend a few of those new hours in bed! Unless this flight gets delayed so long that I can't MAKE the connection. Then this will be bad.
Interesting ticket counter story: when I got into the airport, there was a reasonably-sized line at the Delta counter, but NO ONE working. No lie, I stood there for about 15 minutes, while no one worked at the counter. Apparently a lot of flights have been delayed this morning, and everyone was spread thin trying to reschedule flights for everyone, and no one was really sticking to their designated airline counter as a result. As we slowly compacted the line (I think it must have been a psychological reaction, since we weren't actually moving, we were moving closer together to make the line look smaller and therefore we would THINK we were moving . . .), I saw off to the side that there was one of those self-check in machines. The way it was positioned, it looked like it was reserved for only Super-Duper Frequent Fliers, but there were no signs or other clues to indicate that this was the case, other than the awkward alignment. I asked a few people if they knew if it worked, if we could use it, and no one seemed to know. A woman who had just showed up and was the first to spot it when up to it, but it could find her ticket. Apparently she needed to completely re-book her flight (I told you there were a lot of flight problems this morning), and so it couldn't complete her transaction. No one else seemed to be interested in giving it a go, and since my flight had only been delayed, but not actually canceled or dramatically affected, I decided to give it a try. It worked! In like 3 minutes, I was done.
Let this be a lesson to all who might be involved in the placement of items (ie. everyone at some point in time): if you are going to put up some kind of "convenience" service, like a self-check-in counter, PUT IT SO THAT IT IS OBVIOUS THAT PEOPLE CAN USE IT. It took me 15 minutes in line to even SEE the kiosk, and all that could have been skipped (and probably some people in line in front of me could have tried it too) had they been able to see it.
Also, it looks like the pilots and flight attendant have just showed up at the gate. And the tarmac guy just walked in the door to let them on the plane! But he had a concerned look on his face like something was wrong. Darn.
25 minutes until take off. Supposedly.
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