I never hesitate to complain about airlines here so, in fairness, let me tell you about our flight home from New York. Carolyn and I flew back on American Airlines flight 21 this evening. It was supposed to take off at 7:15 PM. It did. Actually, it took off a few minutes early.
It was supposed to arrive at 10:50 PM. When we touched down, the pilot announced that our gate was not available to us so we had to wait. The plane sat on the tarmac for a good ten minutes, then finally rolled into a gate and we got off. I tell time by my BlackBerry/cell phone, which was off until I got into the terminal, but when I finally did look, it was 10:12. I phoned the limo driver who was coming to pick us up and he was still twenty minutes away. Here's the flight status which I just grabbed off the American Airlines website…
As you can see, it shows us landing at 9:58. I'm not sure if we actually landed at 9:48 and then we had the ten minute wait or if we landed at 9:58 and it took us until 10:08 to get to the gate. But we got in either 52 or 62 minutes early. I tend to believe the 52 just because…well, come on. Over an hour early on a New York-Los Angeles flight? But the 52 is pretty impressive, too.