ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 4, 1996 TAG: 9601040070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on January 5, 1995.
A story Thursday gave the name of Omni Travel & Tours in Blacksburg
incorrectly.
TEMPERS FLARED among Virginia Tech fans stranded in New Orleans after the Sugar Bowl. One got the flu. But many made new friends. And at least their team won.
Hundreds of customers of Blacksburg's Omni Travel & Tour limped home Wednesday in rumpled maroon and orange after camping out in New Orleans hotel lobbies for two days.
Waiting hour by hour since Monday to get a chartered plane home, most of the Hokie fans didn't leave the crowded Hyatt and Doubletree lobbies for fear they'd miss the flight. At night they could check back into rooms.
After two trips to a small airport near New Orleans -and two trips back to their hotels - early in the week, 228 Virginia Tech fans finally got off the ground Wednesday morning. Several said the charter airport where they spent many hours was small, "like the 'Wings' TV show," said Lynda Davenport of Lynchburg.
"By the time it was over, I knew my way to the airport and I had done my bellhop apprenticeship," Frank Rader of Buena Vista said, plopping his bags down at Roanoke Regional Airport just before noon. He said he had packed, repacked, hauled his luggage all over and learned every turn his bus took to Louisiana's Lakefront Airport.
Travelers were furious with Omni owners Patti and Larry Cowley and accused them of knowing all along that their group would be stranded in New Orleans. Others said the Cowleys did the best they could - that when fog barred incoming Roanoke flights Monday and the Omni group missed its scheduled return, the charter airline hired by the Cowleys had to honor other flight commitments until it could work in theirs.
The Cowleys and their family members were among the Tech loyalists tied up in the delays. Granddaughter Lacey Barker, 21/2, waited at the Roanoke airport Wednesday with her other grandparents, Richard and Barbara Barker of Blacksburg, who said the younger Barkers were two days late getting home. Lacey's parents and aunt, also a Cowley daughter, arrived early Wednesday afternoon. Omni's last passengers returned late in the day.
About 5,000 Hokie fans took charter flights last weekend from Richmond, Northern Virginia and Roanoke to New Orleans, and an estimated 500 with Omni were stranded there until Wednesday.
Several other travel agencies got their tours back to Virginia on Monday or Tuesday. Some flew theirs to Greensboro, N.C., and other airports and bused them here when Roanoke was fogbound, between 9:30 a.m. Monday and 7 a.m. Tuesday.
No one answered the phone at Omni Travel & Tour on Wednesday. The Cowleys were said to be en route to Roanoke, so they could not be reached for their account of what happened.
Passengers said they paid $725 each for their flights and for Friday, Saturday and Sunday's lodging. They paid an additional amount for Monday night's stay, discounted by the hotels, and Omni paid for Tuesday's. Lawyers among those stranded talked about taking legal action to recoup the extra expenses and the cost of lost work and vacation time.
Omni customers made front-page news in The Times-Picayune of New Orleans under the headline "Hokies' Thrill of Victory Now Agony of the Wait." The story described them camping out amid heaps of luggage in the hotel lobbies. It said someone wrote "LIES!" over the Omni flight schedule as it kept changing.
"I'm dealing with mothers who are breast-feeding and their babies are running out of the supply they left at home," Larry Cowley told the Times-Picayune. "I've got people on medication whose prescriptions run out at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow, and people who have to meet schedules for other places in the country."
He told the newspaper that the charter airline had been picking up passengers from bowls in Florida instead of getting his people home. AV Atlantic in Fort Lauderdale confirmed Wednesday that it was finally flying Omni's clients home to Roanoke, but an executive with the company did not return a call to explain why the flights couldn't have been run on Tuesday.
Sources at the airport and in the travel business said charter tours can be tricky because of the number of parties involved: travel agencies; charter airlines, which often subcontract their flights out to other plane owners; and often a separate tour booking agency - all with various levels of experience and accountability.
Darren Roney, a Tech alumnus from Blacksburg, got the flu right after Sunday's game and suffered through his illness in all the confusion. Splotched and bleary-eyed, he was sprawled across his luggage and an airport seat in Roanoke as he waited for his wife to get their car and finally take him home.
Their friend Emily Serway of Washington, D.C., said they stayed at the Doubletree, then the Hyatt. She said the Doubletree lobby was small and had little seating. A passenger protested, she said, and the Cowleys moved some people to the bigger-lobbied Hyatt. Even so, she said, "Last night, tempers started to flare."
Many Tech-loving strangers bonded in their predicament, though, and shouted goodbyes Wednesday like old friends.
Millie Beecher, 75, of Blacksburg said she was "the old lady with the cane" in the Hyatt crowd. Linda Crawford of Knoxville, Tenn., a young woman who traveled to New Orleans on crutches because of a broken hip, had one thing to say as she and fellow Hokie Beecher bid farewell:
"It's a good thing we won."
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. 1. Lacey Barker, 2 1/2, anxiouslyby CNBawaits the arrival of her mom and dad from New Orleans after a
two-day delay. 2. David Serway naps on his wife, Emily's, shoulder
while waiting for their luggage at Roanoke Regional
Airport. color.