Today was a goat rope, in one of the worst ways. The heavy fog early this morning which didn’t roll out till after 0700 wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it proceeded to really mess up everything.
Where shall I start? Oh, yes, fog. With heavy fog, the ships creep into port for several nautical miles, not just the last few hundred meters till docking. This in turn results in the ship being late to dock. And the dominos go from there – The Radiance was late in getting all of us off the ship. In fact. it was just about impossible to figure out HOW to get off the ship. Finding luggage wasn’t an issue. The luggage was pretty much lined up properly by luggage tags, but nothing after that was smooth.
No one in the terminal had a clue where the airport bus was going to be picking up. No signs, no clue, no information, no buses. Nada. After 30 minutes (and the departure time for the second bus rapidly approaching, I gave up and used Lyft to get to the airport. It is what I would recommend to anyone disembarking in San Diego. Easy, much less expensive than the transfer offered by the ship.
Then there was San Diego “International Airport.” Part of the chaos wasn’t their fault. Remember that fog I mentioned? Add in blanketing fog and bad weather up the western coast and flights don’t come in on time. Seven or Eight places inbound delayed and it all cascades from there. And before anyone goes down the line of “they have instruments…” Well yes. Instruments help for fly9ing. They might even get a plane landed but what next in total white out conditions on the runway? Those planes have to taxi, get to the gate, get hooked to the jet way – unloaded, loaded etc. The issue isn’t flying – it is the land portion. Add in that San Diego has some restricted air space due to both the Naval Base and the port operations next door and safety says – sorry….
So there I was about 0945 in the morning finding out that my 1430 flight was probably now leaving around 1700. Groan. The automatic machine happily gave me a boarding pass, but no baggage tags. So I stood in the Help line and got baggage tags. And waited another hour before braving security.
If you have never flown in or out of San Diego – you are smart. Certainly, you don’t EVER want to change planes at this airport. Terminal 1 – which is mostly Southwest has three separate areas, each with its own security. And you can’t move between them. When the young woman sitting next to me near Gate 8 saw her flight vanish off the board she panicked. Turns out her flight wasn’t cancelled, it was just moved to Gate 12. Which was in another section meaning she had to leave these gates and go through Security AGAIN for gates 11~18… Would have been nice if Southwest had thought to announce the gate change.
It was essentially 1645 or so before boarding started for my flight. The not quite 90 minute flight was smooth. So was disembarkation in Oakland. Of course we also came in at the far end of the terminal which didn’t matter because the luggage took just about forever and mine was the last up the chute (not shoot… brain fried here). But George was just arriving at the airport and picked me up immediately.
Home. sweet home and my own bed……
With kids near SAN… It’s definitely a mess, though we’ve only been caught in the tiny terminal once or twice. The other thing is that as I understand it they only let experienced pilots fly into SAN because there are too many too-tall buildings too close to it.
My condolences on having to use that airport regularly. I don’t think the “tall building” applies except in special weather since most of the flight paths are over the water… I have certainly flown in and out of airports with much more significant build up in the area.