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Airline Party 2

Jul 14 2008

We flew a full hall from La Guardia to Raleigh-Durham on Saturday.

It was the second Airline Party! For this Airline Party, we introduced a terminal setting in the living room. Soothing music (Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports”) and some ambient airport concourse sounds filled the living room.

We began boarding the flight at 6:45. People slowly trickled in, handing the gate agent their tickets, then walking around to the side of the house to board the aircraft. The passengers walked through the kitchen and took their seat in the hall.

I’m the captain, as usual. Trevor is the head flight attendant. Our pal, Sean, was an assistant flight attendant. They did a fine job getting everyone seated and satisfied.

We enjoyed an on-time 7:05 p.m. departure. I taxied our CRJ-200 to Runway 13 at LGA. The computer flight attendant didn’t seal the door properly, causing me some confusion in the cockpit on the takeoff roll. I didn’t see any problems continuing the flight, so I didn’t return to LGA. We continued the flight, but the computer program that handles the cabin announcements crashed. That was too bad. It added some confusion for the flight attendants.

Once we climbed above 10,000 feet, we began our complimentary drink and snack service. Everyone loved the 100-calorie cookie packs. The coffee was horrible. passengers agreed.

We printed menus for full meals on the backs of the safety cards. Four of eight people ordered our frozen pizza entree. No one wanted our new Fresh Meal service. That’s too bad, because they’re good. Next time, we’re either going to add pictures to the menus or offer only fresh meals.

The flight attendants should have done a better job with meal sales. They didn’t collect any money from the passengers! The pizzas were $2 each! One passenger ordered our Oriental Yum-Yum dessert (another $1 our attendants failed to collect!) and said it was delicious. We lost $9 in revenue! Insolence!

Trevor and Sean did a fine job keeping up with meal preparation. It’s a harrowing task. As we began our descent into Raleigh, the crew went through the cabin to collect trash.

The weather was fine for the entire flight. An hour and 20 minutes after leaving LGA, we arrived safety at RDU. I pulled us into the gate, shut down the engines, opened the doors and our passengers disembarked.

I’m taking suggestions for the next airline party.

Right?