Don’t Ever Leave the Airport

Sometimes coming home from a trip can be the most stressful part.  I should know.  I’ve flown countless flights and have had my fair share of bad experiences.  Today’s trip home is another notch in my horrible flight belt.

Our flight was SUPPOSED to arrive in Seattle at 3:00 this afternoon.  We were SUPPOSED to leave Orange County at 10:10 this morning.  We were SUPPOSED to fly Delta Airlines home.  In reality we arrived closer to 5:00 p.m., left Orange County at 2:00 and flew Alaska Air.

The morning started when we went to check in at the Delta “counter” and robo-ticket agent failed to check Derek all the way through to Seattle and also failed to note that we would miss our connecting flight in Salt Lake due to a delay somewhere.  Then the 1 of only 2 ticket agents put us on Derek on one flight and Me and Oleg on a different flight out of Salt Lake.

Delta was generous and gave us food vouchers to use in the airport.  They were for a whopping 6 bucks each and we dined on McDonald’s for breakfast.  Then we sat there… and sat there.

They finally loaded our plane and we overheard the gate agent talking to someone saying the reason for the delay is that the plane had hit a bird and they had to replace the nose on the plane.  Totally not buying that one, but I was getting on the plane.

On board the plane we sat there… and sat there.  The pilot informed us that the issue was that the fuel gauge was broken and we were waiting for the one guy in the Orange County airport (who was probably on his union mandated smoke break) to come read the dipstick to tell us if we had enough fuel to get to Salt Lake.  A little while later that aforementioned dipstick dude found another problem (he probably broke the dipstick) and they were trying to fix it.  By this point we realized that we were going to miss our second connecting flight and the next flight out of Salt Lake wouldn’t be until 4:58.

Now Delta had a blinding glimpse of smarts and thought ahead and realized the same thing.  The flight attendant had those of us going to Seattle get off of the doomed airplane and transfer to an Alaska Air flight.  The good news is we wouldn’t flying on a plane with a broken dipstick.

We get off of the plane and the gate agent takes our boarding passes and nonchalantly says, “Oh, I think the flight leaves out of gate 10.”  We go to gate 10 to which there is no Alaska ticket agent.  At this point my head was ready to explode, the child was ready to melt down and the trusty husband was trying to hold everything together.  I wandered down to the original Delta and asked the gate agent, “is there going to be someone there?”  The reply, “oh someone should be there about an hour before the flight leaves.”  Like it’s no big deal.  The hell?!  We didn’t know what was going on, we didn’t know if we were actually confirmed on the flight, nothing!

Once in the hands of Alaska Air we were golden.  The flight left on time, the gate agents and baggage agents were lovely.  Oh, did I mention baggage agents?  Why yes, I did.

Not only did we have delays and transfers, we didn’t get our luggage.  The luggage that has things in it like my glasses and the boy’s woobie, not to mention of of our Disneyland souvenirs.  Delta transfered us, but not our luggage.  Oh, and did I also mention that our car seat was also not to be found?  As in the Delta agent that the Alaska agent talked to couldn’t find a tag # for it.  However, Alaska Air is awesome and gave us a loaner seat to get home.

In the end, we made it home and I still hate Delta Air.