The advertisement spoke to me. "ONLY $59 EACH WAY TO MYRTLE BEACH!!! DAILY FLIGHTS!!!" How could we go wrong? We won the four-day-three-night stay at the Yachtsman Resort at my 10th reunion, available from October to February, Sunday through Thursday (it was a little limited). So I booked the flight. It turned out that "daily flights" meant one flight per day; but the times -- 7:00 a.m. from Newark, 1:30 p.m. from Myrtle Beach -- weren't too bad. How could I know the ominous disclaimer, "Please reconfirm departure times 24 hours before each flight," was not simply lawyer-speak?

The flight down wasn't bad, I must admit. I arrived at the airport early enough to snag the exit row. The plane managed to squeeze six seats in each row, and a whole lot of rows into the fuselage. But the odd thing about the plane was its choice of alternate languages. The tray tables were inscribed in English, of course, but also German and a language that considers the letter "g" with a short vowel sound symbol over it to be a common letter. We decided on Czech as our best guess. The exit doors, on the other hand, used English, Spanish, and a Scandinavian language. So this was some Euro-trash plane cobbled together from lots of other planes. We were impressed, if 'impressed' means 'aware of every noise the plane makes.'

So an uneventful flight brought us to Myrtle Beach. An uneventful taxi to the hotel left us a couple of hours to walk on the beach before check-in, and the lack of open restaurants, bars and attractions did not faze us.

Here's where the JetExpress saga hits a snag. An hour after setting down our bags in the spacious room, the phone rings. It's Myrtle Beach Jet Express! They've decided that our 1:30 flight has been moved to 8:30. At night. Since we check out at 11:00, this presents a little problem. Fortunately, Jenny's sister is extraordinarily nice, and offered to drive the 70 miles from UNC-Wilmington for the second time that week to pick us up and show us around Wilmington -- which enabled me to check out Front Street Brewery, which I haven't been to since it opened in 1995. But did I get an explanation from the airline? Nope. Some blather about "normal plane repositioning," which I interpret as "the airport in St. Petersburg, where your plane originates, doesn't find your plane worthy of such a useful time slot, so it bumped your sorry asses."

If the plane would have taken off from Myrtle Beach at 8:30, that wouldn't have been too bad. It took off at about 9:45, due to mechanical difficulties in St. Pete. Have you ever been surrounded by tired, old, cranky New Yorkers for three hours? It's not on my personal Top5 list.

We were not fortunate enough to obtain exit row seating, so we sat in steerage with everyone else. I am six feet, three inches tall. I could not physically sit upright with my knees in front of me. If the person in front of me had leaned his seat back, I'd have screamed in pain. Leaning my own seat back didn't alleviate the problem much, either.

Now, of course, we arrive in Newark about 11:10. I call the car service (since the Newark taxi drivers are generally bastards in our varied experiences) from Baggage Claim to explain matters about 11:25, expecting the luggage shortly (we're the only incoming flight in our terminal) and thus, get our ride home. I've already completely missed any shot at seeing any part of the Duke-Clemson game since the flight is so late. I'm not pleased. The car will be there in ten minutes.

At 11:50, the luggage carousel starts up. A few bags make it out, then it jams. Do they send someone in to fix the carousel? No. Do they switch to thte next carousel over? No. Do they make an announcement regarding the situation? No. Do they constantly start and stop the on-ramp belt expecting to un-jam the suitcases? Oh yeah. Finally, some nice people jump up and start distributing the bags from the stuck belt, since JetExpress had neither the wisdom or the care to do it themselves. We get our bag at 12:20. We're home at 1:10. The car driver was less than amused.

So this is a heartfelt, "Thank You!" to our good friends at Myrtle Beach JetExpress. They easily gained 200 repeat customers from their professional, swift handling of a possible unpleasant situation. What a classy group.

Last updated 23 January 1999