I live in Miami now. This isn’t a bit, this is a change of address. Yesterday I got on a plane at 6:07 in the morning and I got off a plane at nine at night, and the only reason I got off at all is that legally they had to let us out.
We fly into Miami. The pilot comes on: prepare for landing, we are descending. The pilot comes back on: we are not descending. There was a lightning strike. So we circle. And we circle. We circle, we circle, we circle, and I want to be clear, we circle.
The pilot comes on: we’re low on fuel, we’re landing in West Palm Beach. Which is Donald Trump’s airport. And I don’t mean that the way people mean it. I mean that in July they renamed Palm Beach International the President Donald J. Trump International Airport, and in August the airport code itself became DJT, so my diversion has his initials on it. Eric Trump says he’s proud to see DJT on his boarding pass. I did not feel proud. I felt low on fuel.
We land at Donald Trump’s airport, and suddenly eight other American Airlines planes are landing there too, all low on fuel, at an airport that does not have fuel. This airport does not have enough fuel for seven airplanes, and we were eight.
They shut off the engines. What comes next is three hours, no food, one theory I developed against my will, and one line in a federal filing that I have now read forty times. The line is below. The fuel is not anywhere.
