blogging for a purpose

rather than reflecting on blogging and its connection and effect on politics this post is an experiment. Over spring break five of my friends and I decided to do an alternate spring break trip and venture to Spain with nothing but airline tickets and apartment and hostel reservations. Surprisingly, we made great use of all our days abroad and saw what there was to see in the cities as far as official tourism as well as a fair share of things that the Spanish government doesn’t support nor seem to prosecute – like hookers, beer vendors, and drug dealers who line “Las Ramblas” any night after about 1AM. Needless to say, with six best friends in Spain for eight days we had an awesome trip, however, the airline was the only damper. Anyway—the experiment I was going for in this blog was to post about my horrible experience on Iberia Airlines with a picture and see what kind of out-of-class reaction this can/ or will stir up.

on the way to Barcelona, other than about four gate changes connecting in Madrid to reach Barcelona and rude flight attendants – everything went fairly smoothly, that is, other than the landing in Barcelona. The only time I feel Iberia really screwed up was with the flight from Madrid back to JFK. After arriving at the airport we all check in at the ticket counter and are told that since the flight was oversold we don’t have seats and had to take all of our luggage and standby vouchers to a customer service desk. The good news is—they were able to get us seats. Arriving at the gate the flight was delayed 30 minutes for maintenance reasons and then we were able to board the plane. Everything goes smoothly…we take off, and then about 8 minutes later the pilot comes over the P.A. telling us that one of our engines overheated and we need to make an emergency landing back in Madrid. As we touch the ground the aircraft was surrounded by emergency vehicles (fire, police, ambulance) and then we were asked to disembark the plane. Here’s a picture I took from the jet-bridge as we were going back into the airport:




As it turned out, one of the engines had overheated, caught on fire, and was sprayed down by the fire crew. I would think that if they knew it was a problem they wouldn’t put some duct take on and send us on our way across the Atlantic…maybe its just standard procedure. After two hours of sitting in the Airport we were finally able to board a new aircraft and make our way to New York. My friends and I are still trying to come up with an acronym for I B E R I A. Any ideas?

Incompetently
Bringing
Everybody
Roughly
Into
Airports

Hopefully this will let the company know that they really need to get their act together, and possibly some free tickets to Spain for myself? Come on Iberia ....challenge my blog!