Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Grounded

Yesterday was fun...NOT. I was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas for a seminar. I got there early to check-in and found out I had been upgraded to a first class seat. Things were looking good. Then, the lady told me that my flight had changed from Terminal A to Terminal D. Oh well I thought, D is the newer, nicer terminal anyway. About an hour before our 3:00 flight was supposed to take off, it was cancelled. The lady at the desk booked me on a 8:50 flight but told me there was a 2:20 that I could try standby for in Terminal C so off I went. The flight was already booked and the weather blew in. Those people were stuck on the plane on the tarmac in some nasty stuff. Once it cleared up they pulled up and unloaded them. They also cancelled the 4:20 flight and we all headed to Terminal A to try and standby for the 5:45 flight. About 10 minutes after that plane was supposed to start boarding, they told us it was flying out of Terminal D. It was then pushed back to 6:30 to fly out of Terminal A (you're starting to see the pattern I bet). It as cancelled. The 8:50 flight was flying out of Terminal D so off we went. OK, frustrating but still not bad. There's a Railhead BBQ restaurant in D and I was looking forward to it only to find it closed. Dinner at Bennigan's and then watching the Heat-Bulls game in the terminal wasn't so bad. At 8:45, they finally announced that our 8:50 flight was leaving from Terminal A at 9:20. Around 10:00, the evacuated the flight tower and I decided I wasn't making it to Vegas and cancelled my ticket. At 10:20, they finally started boarding the plane and when I left the airport around 10:50 (without my luggage), the plane was still sitting on the ground. I was beat and thin on patience.

It's a beautiful day today and hopefully my luggage will resurface so I can go back to the airport to pick it up. I've often seen these stories on the news and wondered how people cope in those situations. Some handle it pretty well, others do not. I thought two women were going to get in a fight at one point, others were very rude to the airline attendants who didn't have anything to do with the weather or the decisions. The only thing that would have helped is if they would have kept everyone a little bit better informed but I suppose they did what they could.

It will be nice to be here a few days before leaving again next week for Salado.

Have you ever been caught up in a situation like that? What happened? Did you flip?

1 comment:

Rick Ross said...

I think the closest I have ever come to a divorce was when I gave up our seats on a flight to Miami for our 20th anniversary cruise to get two $400 vouchers. They had told us they could get us on another flight. As we approached the ticket counter, we could hear them saying, "We can't get them there." I looked at Beverly (yikes).

It all worked out fine. I guess you knew that, since I am still married.