Baille's irritation was somewhat eased when she and her fellow passengers were informed that their connecting flights would wait. But when Baille arrived that evening in L.A., the final United flight to Seattle was long gone. She was stranded.

The couple in front of her at the customer service desk got hotel vouchers. Baille and about 20 other connecting passengers were told that there were no hotel rooms left in the entire city. "Sleep in the airport tonight and take an Alaska Airlines flight tomorrow morning," the United "owner-representative" instructed her. He pointed to a bench: her bed. When she inquired as to whether the airline would reimburse her if she found a room herself, the agent just shook his head briskly.

Two weeks ago my wife and I clocked about six sweaty miles running between gates for a last-minute standby ticket from San Francisco to Boston after our flight was canceled. A United pilot, all silver wings and silver hair, stood behind us in a ticketing line. "What're they telling you?" he asked. We told him what we'd heard: The delays were the result of pilots who had a problem with Logan Airport's cross-runway flight patterns.

He turned beet red: "Those puke-faced lying bastards!"

A week later my stepdaughter's cross-country United flight pulled out of the gate and stopped. Passengers got no more information for almost an hour. Then the captain came on: "This plane was recently struck by lightning," he said. "The right wing flap isn't working properly and I have determined it is not safe to fly." Back at the gate, as the passengers were being discharged, an attendant confided: "He did the same thing last night."

Friends report similar events. The captain on a London flight turns back from the runway at the last minute. "Sorry, folks," he announces, "I forgot my passport." Another pilot pulls out of the gate after several hours of ground repairs, stops abruptly and then explains to his passengers: "I just noticed they forgot to put fuel in the plane."

Which leaves the rest of us to wonder: Who's in the cockpit here? Leslie Nielsen?

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