Dateline: Boston Marriott, Copley Place

I arrived in Boston for the NSPE Annual Conference after an aborted trip due to “maintenance” issues with ASA. Yesterday’s flight was cancelled after we boarded the plane and the pilot started the engines. He noticed a hydraulic problem that required maintenance. So, we were off-loaded, told to wait a while, and then the flight was officially cancelled. Of course the earlier Friday flight was also cancelled. I got out on the earliest flight Friday morning and arrived in Boston without incident.

Planes with maintenance problems should not fly so I can’t argue about ASA cancelling the flight. But, as I have stated before in my letters to the infamous Atlantic Southeast Airlines, maintenance is something you do to aircraft so that they can fly, it is not an excuse to not fly planes. I never fly only ASA, rather ASA allows me to connect to Delta. I can not count how many ASA flights have been cancelled because of “maintenance”. I can count the number of flights on Delta I’ve been on that were cancelled because of maintenance—one. So, I have to ask myself, how much preventative maintenance does ASA actually do? My suspicion is very little. The pilots are the final quality assurance managers and the passengers are the ones who pay the price.

Checked into the Boston Marriott at Copley Place and was disappointed that they had run out of non-smoking rooms. So I’m in a smokers room and, in spite of the cleaning they do, it still reeks of that nasty smoke smell.

But I did have a great meal though. I was walking around the Prudential Center and ran across Legal Seafoods Restaurant. It looked good, I was hungry, and it was a perfect match. I had the gnocchi lobster and a bowl of clam chowder. Wonderful!