Well, I decided this year that I would take a trip to visit my family in Virginia and it was definitely an interesting experience. I bought the tickets several months in advance figuring I would get the best price since I was buying to far in advance. That is about the only part of the trip that worked out the way I expected! Not surprisingly, there were several changes to the times of the flights over the months before the trip, however, once it came time to actually take the trip is a different story.
So on Friday, 12/23, I get up at 4am and get ready for the Super Shuttle to pick me up at 5:15am. I just finish getting ready when I get a call at 5am saying that the van will be at my location in 5 minutes! I think to myself “Cool, I’ll be at the airport earlier than I expected.” This would have worked out if the guy driving the van didn’t take his sweet ass time picking up the other 2 people he needed to pick up. Needless to say, I get to the airport at about 5:45am, which is almost exactly an hour before my flight leaves. I figured this was enough time to get checked in, drop off my luggage, and get to the gate… Boy was I wrong!
I forgot to account for the fact that it was 2 days before Christmas and the line for checking in was long but moving quickly. I drop off my bag and get to the gate security and the line is even longer and moving painfully slow. By now, it is 6:20am and I figure that 25 minutes would be plenty of time to get through security and to the gate. Well, I was wrong again, getting through security takes 20 minutes! That gives me 5 minutes to get to my gate, luckily, the gate was right next to the end of the security line, however, the boarding had already been closed and the plane was “out of the gate” already! Except, it wasn’t! I looked over the customer service guys shoulder and can see my plane setting at the gate still but they would not let me on because the had it marked as being out. Bunch of B.S. if you ask me…
Well, he takes me ticket and schedules me as a stand by on the next flight that leaves in an hour. I get to the gate and get comfortable enough to wait an hour when I hear an announcement stating that the plane has been over booked and they are wanting volunteers to change their tickets to standby for another flight. At this time I am figuring my chances of getting to Atlanta to make my connecting flight are slim to none. Well, the hour passes quickly, they start boarding the flight and 5 minutes before the plane was supposed to leave they call me up and tell me that they were able to get me a seat! I was very happy to say the least! I was able to get to Atlanta and make my connecting flight without further incident… that is until the trip home!
So I spend my vacation with my family and it was lots of fun, but as always, the fun has to end at some time. Tuesday rolls around and we get to the airport so I can head back home and we find out that the flight I was supposed to be on was delayed by 20-30 minutes. I figured that is ok because I have an almost 2 hour layover in Atlanta again so a half hour shouldn’t be that bad. Well, the plane comes in 30 minutes late as expected, we all get boarded and it takes off. Up to this point the trip has been fairly uneventful, but I should have known better! We get about 80 miles outside of Atlanta and the pilot comes on and says that there is too much traffic landing all at once so we will have to circle the airport for 10-15 minutes, so it was no surprise when we landed 35 minutes later! At this time, it is already 20 minutes after my connecting flight was supposed to leave so I am thinking I will be waiting on standby for another flight. I check the boards and it says the flight is still boarding, however, it is at gate B27 and I was at gate D31… I never walked so fast in my life!
Luckily, getting from concourse D to concourse B was fairly easy as they have an underground train that takes passengers between the terminals very quickly. I get to concourse B and start my trip to the gate and it was SO busy that I could barely wade through all the people. Well, I get to gate B27 and, to my surprise, they are still boarding and there is a very long line waiting to get on. Apparently it was a completely full flight and everyone had decided to show up, including the two people who were booked to sit in seat 25D! I thought I was doing bad! They almost had to book her on another flight until they decided to bump the pilot that was flying home up to first class and put her in his seat in coach. Well, we didn’t get in to the air until an hour after the plane was supposed to originally leave but I made it back to Phoenix and so did my luggage. I was worried that I may have missed the flight but I didn’t. That would have sucked since it had ALL of my clothes except what I was wearing and I still had to work one day this week. Oh, and my CPAP machine was in it as well which would have meant I wouldn’t be able to sleep!
Well, next year I will be making sure I get to the airport at least 2 hours in advance and hopefully I will be able to take off more days than I could this year. Overall, it was a very fun trip though and I will be adding pictures and video of what I could get while I was there.
