We last saw our heroes recovering from a trip to Hollywood’s Magic Castle. The following morning, Nicole wanted to play tourist and we walked by a few drug addicts to see the Chinese theater. That was the extent of our Hollywood adventures. After a night of not great sleep in the crappy Magic Castle “Hotel,” we were eager to just get back home. We never got to use the Popsicle hotline, but at the end of the day, I don’t actually like popsicles that much.
Just one day later, we had to get to New Jersey to kick off some east coast adventures with Gath, everyone’s favorite albeit sometimes slightly offensive and stereotypical New Jersey couple. The problem with this plan, however, is that the Newark airport is a truly horrendous place to try and get to in the middle of summer…or any time frankly. Heavy rains and storms had slammed the area for multiple days in a row leading to countless cancelations, diversions, or delays. This combination of factors is not good for the standby traveler, but probably worse for those who actually paid.
The best I could come up with was changing planes in Las Vegas, where an afternoon flight from there to Newark was showing oversold (but also holding about 60 open seats mysteriously). I decided that would be our only gamble in Vegas — that these seats would hopefully be released. But because Newark was SOOOO bad, nobody’s planes were where they were supposed to be, so even flights from LAX to Las Vegas looked quite bad. And thus we concocted a plan that involved flying JSX, a sort of pseudo-private jet branded service out of Santa Monica. We hopped in a Lyft about 35 minutes prior to our plane’s scheduled departure and arrived at the Santa Monica airport about 14 minutes later.
For those not in the know, the Santa Monica airport is very small, used mostly for small single engine aircraft, and has no commercial flights other than this JSX offering. And it is especially unique because the SM Airport is actually scheduled to close soon — having been attacked relentlessly by crotchety neighbors whose primary complaint is that they chose to live next to an airport. We grabbed a few snacks from the JSX lounge before boarding the ATR 42, a private prop if you will. JSX tends to attract some celebs (like Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple). Nicole was also eying up one of our fellow passengers and said, “I think that’s John McEnroe.” Johnny Mac, for those not in the know, is perhaps best known for serving tennis aces while all serving savage insults — usually directed at tennis umps. Another passenger essentially said, “I loved watching you play tennis,” to which Johnny Mac said, “Oh that’s not me. I just look like him.” Classic McEnroe move to deny you’re him though right?!
After being delayed slightly for flow into Las Vegas, we catapulted into the sky like being shot off an aircraft carrier. We had nice views of the Santa Monica Pier before banking toward Malibu and catching glimpses of the Getty Villa before continuing our climb inland and over the desert. Las Vegas in the summer tends to be quite turbulent due to heat thermals and the surrounding terrain. Our little ATR was getting absolutely battered by the turbulence for the last 10 minutes of the flight. It was a short taxi to the JSX terminal and we were hit with the 110 degree heat a few minutes later.
JSX does not operate out of regular airport terminals which is part of their sales pitch. No TSA! No ICE! No $6 bottles of water! That’s great, but for those looking to change planes to a normal airline, it’s not really convenient. I suppose hypothetically one could walk around the airport perimeter fence for about two miles and eventually reach the terminal, but this part of town isn’t really pedestrian-friendly and that’s not even taking into account the heat. We got another Lyft, which dropped us off at Harry Reid International’s main terminal a few minutes later.
We had almost three hours to kill before our first United flight. This is more time in an airport than we usually have, but not nearly as much as dads the world over. I grabbed some Quiznos, but then thought about a lounge. We took the train back toward the Southwest terminal to go to the Chase Sapphire lounge. There was a short wait to get in, but we were seated at a table where we could order food and drinks. I had some okonomiyaki fries (Japanese-inspired fries with Kewpie mayo and bonito flakes) and a Paulaner to wash it down. I later grabbed a peach cobbler, a rhubarb tart, and a chocolate brownie. One never knows when their next meal might be.
We eventually made our way back to the D gates to wait for our flight with the 60+ open seats. Most of the standby passengers were actually paying customers who had been severely delayed or had their flight canceled. The list was being cleared very slowly before the gate agent appeared to just give up and the plane left with about 50+ seats empty due to supposed weight restrictions as a result of the heat. I could understand the excuse, but the 50+ seats seemed a bit excessive. I switched our listing to another United flight which looked considerably worse and had a longer standby list.
With the writing on the wall, Nicole started looking up hotels in Las Vegas and I was researching the hours of the Neon Museum. And yet, the unexpected occurred. With 8 other standbys left to clear, the gate agent called all the standbys forward. At first she thought she could give us seats, but the system showed the flight closed. Our United apps said, “You have a seat!” followed by “Psych! Just kidding! No seat for you!” The gate agent couldn’t reopen the flight, so she wrote seat numbers on a paper ticket and told us to take those seats. We were not 100% convinced this was all going to work. We sat down in the exit row. The door closed. We pushed, we took off, and miraculously and against all logic were on a flight to Newark.
Flying from Vegas didn’t really save us much time, and we touched down at almost 1am before catching our 3rd ride share of the day into the bowels of New Jersey, finally reaching out destination at 2am. What a day.
passports & pepto bismol 