I often say – if people didn’t need to get on a plane, I could sell a lot more travel. You hear the horror storries of terrible experiences, long layovers, missed connections and sitting on the tarmac and you just think… sorry for them, so glad that’s never happened to me. Then it happens to you. Suddenly you think everyone needs travel insurance afterall and getting one that would assist you along the way would be priceless.
I had been at a large travel convention in New Orleans. My flight home was on time, which was unlike my nightmare flight coming into the convention where I sat in my home airport for 8 hours waiting for a flight that would get me to the convention, missing the best dinner of the trip.
So here I am thinking, this is going better. I even got the exit row. The first leg is one hour, nine minutes to Dallas. After about an hour the pilots voice comes over the speaker and tells us that due to storms in the area we can not land. I had been trying to sleep because I was very sleep deprived from convention life, and had pulled the shade on the window. At this news of storms I opened the shade and gasped a loud gasp right along with the woman next to me. Did we see lightening, dark scary clouds? No… we saw the ground and clear skys with a few puffy white clouds in the distance. We felt lied to in that instant.
This common experience brought my neighboring seat partner and I to share our trip experience thus far, which included that we were both at the same convention. Her husband was sitting next to her. We were both travel agents. If it wasn’t for my new friends this experience would have been much worse. They were headed for Portland also, so we stuck together through it all.
So our story included being detoured to Oklahoma City for refueling. They let passengers that had this stop as they final destination off, but told them, sorry no luggage. We were told we were 12th in line for fuel at one point. We were never near a gate, just sitting in a line of planes on the tarmac. They brought snacks onboard, and told us they didn’t have enough for everyone, so just take some if you need it. I was pretty glad that I had decided to go to the breakfast buffet at the hotel and really ate a lot of protein for some rediculous amount – like $23 for breakfast. I did finally eat in Dallas about 10 hours after we left New Orleans.
We, my new friends and I managed to get a reservationist to list us on a plane going to Seattle, just incase we missed the last flight to Portland. When we finally got into the airport in Dallas we ran to the Portland flight which was delayed, but it was also oversold by 20 something and we weren’t getting on that one. So off we fly to Seattle.
When we arrived in Seattle it was 1-2AM and the flights to Portland didn’t start until 6AM. We booked the 7:30 or something and started to look for an inexpensive hotel with airport shuttle. Three of us working on this and it still took a while. We settle on a place that had a sofa bed in a separate room and shared the cost of the room. Yes – I said we are now close friends. In the morning had a good breakfast at the hotel - strawberries on waffle with whipped cream. When we got to the airport we were able to catch an earlier flight and off to Portland, door to door – 24 hours to get home.
What I learned from my trip:
1. Always call the airline and check to see if you are delayed. I didn’t do that on the way down and I should have. Sitting in the airport for 8 hours was silly.
2. Make sure your cell phone is completely charged, and don’t leave the charger in the hotel room as you leave, or it will die on you while you are on hold for 45 minutes trying to get through to an airline to change your flight. ( I did get my charger back, or someone elses, the hotel even sent me an extra one – said they had a room full of chargers)
3. Trust your gut. I wouldn’t have shared a hotel room with just anyone, but I instinctly knew this couple were just great. In fact she joined the agency I use right after this ordeal. Reaching out and remaining friendly really helped this be less of a nightmare. I was so thankful to be in an exit room though. If I had my super long legs in the regular seats that long, I would have died. The flight from Dallas to Seattle was worse, I had this monster size guy infront of me that put his seat back to fit, and his weight pushed the chair back farther than it should go, pinning me. My knees were killing me after that flight. Plus person space issues had been violated, so I was pretty fed up.
So how to fix this mess. I don’t know. Don’t travel during summer storm season? Don’t go to Texas? Don’t use American Airlines? Don’t book flights with tight connections? Don’t go anywhere, just watch the travel channel and live through others?
Well, I’m going to continue to travel and remember that even while this nightmare was happening it was more of an adventure and a race to see how we were going to get home – a puzzle. And everyone in my house knows I LOVE PUZZLES.
