Horrible Travel Experience

So…I left my house at 2:30am EST on Wednesday morning to be on a bus out of Portland at 3:15am EST. I arrived in Boston at 5am EST, checked my baggage after waiting in a long line, got the extra-special treatment in the Security line, had a donut and some bad coffee from the Dunkin Donuts kiosk, read a book, and boarded my plane at 6:45am EST. We then waited on the tarmac for about an hour and fortunately I slept through most of that and the take off because apparently we had engine trouble and took off anyway. Anyway, I woke up as we were making a big u-turn because a smoke detector had gone off in the bathroom in the back. We landed back in Boston with an escort of fire engines.

Then the nightmare began as everyone on the plane had to be rerouted. None of us were making our connections, etc. Five of us were going to El Paso, oddly enough. All five of us had been booked on the following route — Boston to Baltimore to Atlanta to El Paso, arriving at 2:30
MST. One gal got on a plane leaving immediately for Baltimore on another airline but it was the last seat. Another plane was about to leave for Atlanta with four seats open which would have gotten us to Atlanta by that connection time, but the pilot actually refused to wait
for us!

Anyway, the best they could do for me was get me on a plane leaving for Atlanta at 2:40 EST with a connection that would get me to El Paso at 7:55PM MST. However, the flight to Atlanta only had one seat and it was in First Class so I did get to ride First Class, but I had to hang around in the Boston airport for an agonizing amount of time.

The plane for Atlanta left late and I had less than 30 minutes to change planes in different concourses in Atlanta. I thought I was going to die by the time I got to the plane.

When I arrived in El Paso, half of my luggage arrived but the other half was on an American Airlines plane (I flew Delta) that would not arrive until 10:40pm MST. By the time I got my luggage and we drove the 3 hours to Silver City, it was 2am MST.

Oy.

However, I will say that I preferred the travel delay to the chance that the plane I was on was on fire.

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One comment

1. on December 22, 2005 at 10:13 pm

   Tamara said:

   Oh my! Glad you finally arrived. What an adventure (there’s my annoying habit of always trying to look on the bright side!)

   Enjoy your Christmas!

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