Alright, it's late but I thought it'd be best to let y'all know what Lish and I have been up to so far.
We started our journey back out west on Dec. 18th. Our flight was supposed to leave TLH at 5:45pm, but Lish's mom got a phone call earlier that day letting her know about a change in her itinerary. (The tickets had been bought under her name.) Apparently our flight had been changed to 6:45pm. It didn't really change anything because we'd still catch our connection in ATL, so we just decided to take our time a little more at home and make sure we had everything ready. Lish had signed up for text alerts telling him about our flight status. He got at least 3 texts letting him know of slight time changes, and one while we were on our way to the airport telling him our flight was at 6:49pm.
So we arrive at the airport around 5:45, and the guy who is checking us in is letting us know that a bunch of flights are delayed. He told us we'd be lucky to even get out by 7, so we tried to be hopeful while going through security. We got to our gate and Lish noticed a bunch of people standing up by the ticket agent looking a little flustered, so he went up there to see what was going on. Turns out,
our flight had already left. There was no change in the itinerary, it was just delayed, but we were getting those status updates and the screens still displayed "6:49pm" as their departure time. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but we weren't the only ones stuck in this situation.
Another flight was leaving to ATL around 7, so we tried to see if they had any available seats on that flight. They had 4, so we were booked on that flight. Well, turns out they were "overweight" and couldn't fit anyone else on. So then we were booked on the next flight that was supposed to leave at 7 but was delayed until 8:35pm. (Are you following me here? Yes, it was this crazy.) We were hoping maybe that flight would pull whatever our original flight pulled and leave early so we could have a chance to catch our connection.
Karen (Lish's mom) called the airline at ATL to see what the status of our next flight was, and supposedly they were going to be delayed 50 minutes. We still had a small fighting chance. We didn't leave earlier than 8:35, but we were hoping the delay in ATL was still in effect. We arrived in ATL and the gate we were supposed to pull into was taken, so we waited on the tarmac for 40 minutes. The people next to us were checking their flight connection status, so we asked them to check ours, and low and behold, our connecting flight had already pulled away from the gate. Lish and I were still trying to be optimistic (not so much me, mostly Lish), so he said, "As soon as we get off this plane, just book it to the gate we're supposed to depart at. I'll find a ticket agent and see what the status is, but you just run like the wind." And I did. I took off in that airport and was getting all sorts of crazy looks.
And it was all for nothing, of course.
The plane had already left (we weren't really surprised at this point), and there were no other planes departing to SLC that night. We tried to get on a flight for the next morning and all the flights to SLC were overbooked until 6pm on Saturday evening, putting us into SLC at 8:30pm their time. We had the agent give us confirmed seats on that flight and asked if we could be put on standby for the other flights, just in case. Of course with the way the rest of our day had gone, we weren't too hopeful. We decided to rent a hotel room for the night since we'd be spending all the next day in an airport. The airlines wouldn't pay for it though, because it wasn't their fault. Of course, right? They said it was due to "weather delays." Alright, whatever, we're tired.
We got up on Saturday morning and strode back to the airport, dog in tow and wearing the same things as the day before. (We had no idea what had happened to our luggage.) The first flight from ATL to SLC that morning was at 7:30, so we got to the airport around 5:45am. We didn't make it on that first flight. There were plenty of other flights and with the way things had gone the night before, we were due for some good luck, right? The second flight trudged along and the plane wasn't as big. However, not everybody checked in for the flight. We were high enough on the standby list that we were the first people in line! And we made it on the plane. We were so relieved.
We made it into SLC before noon MST that day. AND our bags were already in SLC waiting for us. It was such great luck! We were so excited to shower and brush our teeth and change our clothes. I've never felt so clean!
Worst. Airplane. Experience. Ever.
THEN we flew out again on Sunday to go to California. Everything was fine with our flight out there, thank goodness. We flew back into Utah on Tuesday night, but our flight was 2 1/2 hours late because of weather conditions in Utah. But we didn't even really care. We knew our plane was en route, and we knew we had seats on the plane, and we knew the updated schedules. We were just so sick of airports. I'm glad we'll have had this week and a half break before we have to go back.
Me and airports do NOT get along right now.
Anyway, that was the fun stuff. I'll blog about the other REAL fun stuff that's been going on later. Must. Get. Sleep.
