A longer than expected layover in Atlanta on my way to Ohio – AirTran, quite amusing

So, recently I had to make a trip to Ohio, my father passed away and I was on my way to the funeral when I stopped in Atlanta for what was supposed to be a 40 minute layover. That quickly turned into nearly a two hour layover with the craziest airport layover story I have ever heard, so I will share it with ya’ll. The flight left Jacksonville early, 6:20 am, which means I had to be there by 5am, which means we left the house shortly after 4am. Needless to say, I was tired when we got there, my Gate station does not open until 6am so there was no coffee for me. There was a coffee place in the airport so I was able to get a 6 dollar cup of coffee and a 4 dollar banana nut muffin, neither were particularly good but they would sustain life and provide some caffeine. We headed to gate A4 and got settled, the wait was not long and when zone 5 was called we boarded the plane. A Boeing 717-200. The flight to Atlanta was uneventful, all 43 minutes of it and I was able to get some sleep. I knew we had a quick turnaround in Atlanta and was hoping we were at least on the same concourse. Hartsfield International can be an intimidating if you have never been, it is really easy and efficiently laid out though. I like the occasional train ride and even walking between concourses to gander at the art that they always have on display there.

So we get in at gate C7 and our departure gate is C2. Whew, what a relief we will not have to run to our departure gate I remember thinking. We get there and they just call for zone 4 to board, hey that is me so on I go. As I made my way down the aisle in the plane, I was struck by the fact there is no row B. The seats were A, C, D, E and F. I found out that they call that “providing only one middle seat per row” and understand that part of it for the end user perspective. I mean less middle seats for the airline to try to sell, I mean come on – everyone hates the little tiny cramped middle seat. What I could not understand was the naming convention, A, C, D, E and F. I would later find out that it has nothing to do with the plane but everything to do with the reservation system. Seat A is always a window seat, seat C is always an aisle seat and seat B is always a middle seat, I was in seat C on the aisle and Niece was in A by the window. Anyway, we are sitting on the plane, it is almost completely loaded and I notice that the woman one row up and on the opposite side aisle seat has a nervousness about her. Squirming in the seat, nervously looking around and having what I swear was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead, she looked vaclempt, which means she was expressing anguish over some particular situation. Great I remember thinking, what are the little old ladies now terrorists? I remember making the argument on numerous occasions that little old ladies should not have to suffer the indignities of the preflight security checks. Now I have proof I was WRONG.

The next thing I know she is talking with the flight attendant in hushed tones, believe me I was trying to make out what they were saying. If she was a terrorist, I was ready to use my composition pad and ink pen to take her out! I got nothing and the flight attendant walked up front. A few minutes later, the captain of the plane is making his way back to seat 26D. Again with the hushed tones and I could still not make out what they were saying. I remember watching an episode of MacGyver in which he used a gum wrapper as the solution to an extraordinary problem so I pulled out my gum and started chewing a piece. As they were finishing their conversation I was ready to leap into action to save the plane, I then heard what they were talking about, she had seen a mouse under her seat. A mouse, I remember thinking - so what. But since that mouse did not pay for a ticket they were not leaving the Atlanta airport with this stowaway. Well you can imagine that this news made its way towards the front and towards the read of the aircraft at the speed the plane was capable of flying - at full throttle. It was amusing for me to watch, hushed whispers, row by row and people looking around and shuffling back and forth in their seats. I thought, if he comes through my row I would just step on him and we would be on our way.

Well before long, there were three employees of the service used to clean the plane, SkyClean. One had a little broom about 4 inches wide, one had a dustpan and one had a stick. I thought to myself, this is going to be fun to watch and guess what, it was. Three grown men, lying on the floor, looking under the seats, all of which were full of passengers. The backs of their overalls emblazoned with “SkyClean” and under that their motto “plane clean”. I remember thinking, not so “plane clean” if we have mice on board. Well as these three very dedicated employees were trying to look for the mouse it turned into what I thought resembled a game of demented “whack a mole” either that or the plane was infested with mice. One person would squeal and jump up in the front of the plane, the next second someone in the rear on the other side would squeal and jump up and the next thing ya know all over the plane people were squealing and jumping up. Most of them obviously just thinking that something touched their leg or wherever else they thought they might have felt it. What started out as amusing slowly turned into the ridiculous, here we were, 35 minutes later still playing games with a mouse. Don’t get me wrong for the first 10-15 it was very funny but then the novelty wore off and I just wanted to depart so the folks picking us up in Ohio would not have to wait extra time. After a good 45 minutes I heard one of the SkyClean guys mumble “I have a college degree and here I am crawling around on a plane looking for a mouse”. And with that he got up and said “that’s it were done and you will have to fly with him” and the three of them departed the plane, never to be seen again.

A few moments later, the pilot comes on and tells of a problem with the plane, never once mentioning what everyone already knows, and tells us that we have to deplane. We all shuffle off the plane, thinking that it would be easier to catch the little bugger with all the seats empty. As we are waiting in the gate area I hear folks talking about it with other passengers, it is still rather amusing. I take out my composition pad and start taking some notes so I can remember the highlights of this ordeal. They then tell us we are going to moving to a new gate and getting on a new plane and that they would announce where soon. I am standing by the window looking out at the plane, tail number N312AST, just as an F150 pulls up under the walkway to the plane. I thought, here come the reinforcements. I then got to wondering about where that little guy came from. The Atlanta airport is not really a place that is conducive to mice. I mean I do not know how many acres of tarmac there are but there are just not a lot of places for a field mouse to live and play. Unless there were city mice, able to live among the concrete, steel and buildings as well as ducking fast moving aircraft ranging from the smallest up the larger 747’s. So where did he come from, I heard mummers in the crowd that he may have come in with the food carts. The food carts, they do not serve food on the flight from Atlanta to Dayton Ohio, we would be lucky to get peanuts, of which I will never eat on a plane again. No idea and I thought, speculating how he got there would not end with a warm fuzzy feeling for me so I dropped the thinking about it.

So as I was looking out the window I see the bags being unloaded from the cargo holds, down they came on a conveyor belt to a waiting tow motor driven baggage train. All of the sudden I see a bag, one that looks suspiciously like mine, drop from the plane and bounce onto the tarmac. I asked those around me if they saw that, to which I got a resounding yes. I was reminded why I usually FedEx my bags ahead of me on a trip. My thinking on that is if you have to pay for a bag, who is least likely to lose it, FedEx or AirTran? Due to the short notice for this flight I did not have the time to Fedex them. Anyway an AirTran employee runs over and grabs the bag, just as he is ready to turn to place the bag on the train he glances up and our eyes meet, he knows he is busted. He quickly tosses the bag in and scurries out of sight. They come over the announcement system and tell us we are moving from gate C2 down to gate C14 and off we go to our new gate. When we get there a different flight is already waiting to board the plane, they are being moved to another gate as well. I listen and laugh as someone from our plane relates the story to someone waiting at this gate, waiting to find out what gate they are going to. Well wouldn’t ya know it after telling this woman the story, including what gate we had come from, the announcement came, those passengers are to report to gate C2. I almost laughed out loud and thought should I tell her the tail number of the mouse infested plane so they would know if they even switched plane – no I thought, no sense in causing hysteria at the Atlanta airport. We boarded and the flight to Dayton was uneventful.

I leave you with one piece of advice friends, when they ask if you want the peanuts – PASS.