I'm currently in Phoenix, and suffering through a travel delay. I fly pretty frequently, so sadly, this is a pretty regular experience for me. I thought I would ask if anyone else has ever dealt with a flight delay.
My wife just dealt with a horrible day recently, albeit in a different country. She was due to fly out of a city in Venezuela at 9AM. Her flight was delayed a few hours since it had not arrived yet, and around 2pm was told that she had to fly out of a different airport that night at 10pm. The airport was 4 hours away. When she got there she was told she had 3 minutes to make it to the gate, so she could not eat or anything. So she rushes to the gate only to find that again, the plane was not even there yet! She didn't fly out of there until 11:30pm. She flew to Curocao, where she was to connect to another flight to Miami in the morning. Well low and behold the flight to Miami was delayed due to engine trouble. When she finally arrived in Miami, she was supposed to connect to one last flight home to Orlando. Guess what, again that flight was also delayed 2 hours due to engine trouble.
out of 11 total flights(not roundtrips) ive been delayed twice..once to hawaii, i was so excited!! but flight was delayed like 5 hours...and on the way home from new york, there was a bomb threat or something they had to take out all the seats and search the plane.
You know, I don't like rare steak either, but I'm delayed all the danged time. I guess the more you travel the more your odds increase.
I fly quite often, and for that reason DIRECT flights are my preferred method, the fewer the connections/layovers the better. I hardly ever check bags for the same reason. Obviously, on occassion even DIRECT flights can have problems, fortunately in the DC area I have 3 major airports to choose from so that helps. Hang in there, when it happens it really bites. My worst story, was a non-direct option, with connection from DC to Las Vegas to ultimately San Diego. My flight out of DC was held on the tarmac so that put us behind..we landed in LV with only minutes to spare (I was one of approx 30 people trying to make this connection); not only did the airline not try to help, we got to the gate and watched as the plane was still connected to the jetway, only to be told that the jetway doors are closed so therefore no more passengers are allowed to board. Regardless of how much I tried to rationalize that 30some odd passengers are here to board, and that a connected jetway means the plane is still here, we all watched as 20 minutes later the jetway was finally detached and the plane left without us. We were simply told to go to customer service and find alternative flights to SD. It happens, and boy does it suck when it does.
