The Las Vegas Racket
Has anyone seen the pilot’s iPads?
Las Vegas is a fascinating place in so many ways. It brings together people from different backgrounds and personalities for a few days of “fun” or work before everyone disbands and goes back to their normal lives. It is said that what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. I believe this includes most cash given the prevalence of ways to donate money to large corporations. I don’t think it includes hangovers, lung cancer and various other fun-to-transmit diseases. These definitely go home with people.
This time I stayed at the Westin in Las Vegas, a hotel that does not include a casino and is fortunately smoke-free and just off the Strip. This was a better choice as I could be somewhat insulated from the debauchery a few blocks away. The hotel gym was dated, but had actual TRX straps and plenty of workout machines that mostly worked.
The benefit of Las Vegas for large groups is that hotels are relatively inexpensive and they have the infrastructure to host large events without giving it a second thought. What would swamp another city happens many times a week. This week it meant I was sharing my hotel with the Wilson Sports Products Annual Team Meeting. It was bound to be a racket.
This meant the hotel was busy with very fit former tennis players who were all very nice. It was not the usual Las Vegas crowd. It also meant getting equipment in the gym was more difficult than normal. I arrived later in the morning with an elliptical workout on my schedule. I had a choice between a machine that wouldn’t turn and actually do the elliptical motion or a machine that sounded like gravel in a steel drum rotating at high speeds. I had headphones so I chose the gravel machine. Others who did not I’m sure wished I had gone for the other broken machine. A cool thing was seeing the people from Wilson doing strength training. It is rare to see such good form at a hotel gym with questionable equipment. Bravo, Wilson, Bravo. Tom Hanks would be proud.
The flight back was an adventure as well. I arrived from Las Vegas into San Francisco, before taking a final flight home. The flight was scheduled to take off at 5 p.m. and arrive at 6:35. It is now 6:37 and I am writing this from seat 4C as we taxi to the runway for takeoff. It has been an interesting couple of hours leading to this point.
United (and Skywest, but we will credit this one to United as they codeshare) determined the plane we were scheduled to take needed maintenance. The pilots, not understanding the aircraft would be towed so quickly, left their bags and iPads in the plane only to return and find a new plane at the gate. All for their stuff, and that of the flight attendants, was in the broken aircraft. Efficiency at its finest!
The pilots asked maintenance to retrieve their belongings. Maintenance is used to doing maintenance things like fixing wings, dials and other airplane gizmos. They couldn’t find the stuff. Finally, the first officer and a flight attendant took a truck out to the broken aircraft, retrieved their belongings and returned to the gate so we could board and take off.
The final issue is that the wind changed direction and is now heading from West to East. SFO has four sets of runways (eight runways in total), two that run South-North (usual configuration) and two that run East-West (again, usual configuration). When the wind is running West-East, aircraft need to take off into the wind and the South-North runway isn’t used. Planes also need to land into the wind as well. So we are now taxiing to the runway furthest from the gate that is being shared with arriving aircraft. This isn’t unusual, but it does lead to further delays. An Alaska Airlines 737 just touched down in front of us, so hopefully we can go now.
The joys of flying…
