My (almost) encounter with Air Force One

Today I flew back from a week in North Carolina, where I worked on a new collaboration with Shira Anthony. I had to change planes in Las Vegas. Normally, a fairly easy operation, and a little more than an hour of flying time back to SFO.

Except for today. My flight home was delayed though they wouldn’t give any reason. We boarded about 20 minutes late and as we were preparing for departure the pilot filled us in: President Obama had been in San Francisco, and they shut SFO down until he left. Planes arriving either fly around wasting fuel, or for the shorter hops, they don’t get clearance to take off until Obama’s on his way.

Interesting. Or at least it might have been. But, as we were moving down the runway the plane slows down and stops. The pilot comes back on the intercom to inform us Obama’s departure was delayed. There was no ETA, but he estimated an hour. So we got to sit on the runway in the Vegas airport until our plan was given clearance again. At least it was only another hour, but that was already doubling the time on the plane.

I suspect the crew at the gate didn’t even know what was holding our plane up. Maybe it’s some sort of national security thing. They did let us use phones and computers and all the electronics we wanted while we had to wait. I think they should have served us free drinks. It was only 10:30 am local time, but I’d been up since 4 a.m. Eastern time, and I was more than ready for a cocktail.

At least there weren’t any crying kids like on the first flight I had today. I guess they weren’t happy about flying out at 6 a.m. But who would be?