Want to hear a scary story about Delta Airlines? I flew to see Shawn and Caroline while Shawn was studying for the bar exam. When I arrived back in Philadelphia, everybody from the flight waited 45 minutes for their luggage to come off the luggage carousel. The passengers were pretty worked up by that point. The luggage finally comes out and all of a sudden there is an overwhelming smell of gasoline, jet fuel actually. Being a former Navy pilot, this is a smell with which I am quite familiar.

Everyone's luggage is soaked with fuel. I was one of the first people to talk to the luggage support folks. I complained about the problem and they took my luggage to get it dry cleaned. I told them that they needed to call someone in charge of maintenance because there may be an internal fuel leak in the aircraft. They basically replied, "Whatever, dude, get out of here."

After I get home, I talk to my pilot friend at Delta and ask if this could be caused by just spilling gas during refueling. He says the only way the luggage can get covered in fuel is with an internal leak. So during our flight, our luggage compartment had luggage soaked with fuel and fuel vapor filling the whole compartment. The Delta flight was an explosion waiting to happen. All it would have taken is one static electricity spark or an electrical wire getting too hot and that plane would have gone down in a fiery blaze.

This is stuff you don't hear about on the news. On a good note, I have been doing some trading on DAL's volatile stock. I was able to buy at about 3.70 and flip it at 7 in less than a month. So I can't get too mad at them, right?