At Long Last!!!

I'm finally back in Miami and it was quite the adventure!


Everything started off just lovely. My trip from Merna to Omaha was relatively uneventful. There was only about 5 miles of bad road conditions (a blessing considering the weather report). I arrived at the Omaha airport over 2 hours early for my flight home. I thought that I was being smart to book the connecting flight through Atlanta. I didn't have to deal with any winter weather or terrorist threats from Detroit. (Silly Valerie).

At 4:45 just 30 minutes before our plane was scheduled to depart the gate attendant announced that our plane was delayed in Detroit but not due to security measures, oh no but due to mechanical difficulties and that are new scheduled departure time was 7pm which means that almost everyone was in danger of missing their connecting flights. She then asked everyone to get in line to get rebooked on to later flights.

There was of course only one person working behind the counter to accommodate rebooking the entire plane. I stood in line for over an hour to be told that the plane is now scheduled to depart Omaha at 8:05 and I too would now miss my connecting flight. But because the delay was mechanical they (Delta) would put me up in a hotel in Atlanta and would put me on the 8:45 flight to Fort Lauderdale.

Sound simple enough right?? (Silly, Silly Valerie...nothing's ever that simple) The plane actually arrived into Omaha around 7:15pm and everyone boarded the plane in a quick and orderly fashion. We were ready for departure by 7:30. But we couldn't push back from the gate until there was a push back crew and runway personnel (The people with the orange sticks) which of course were nowhere to be found. A crew finally showed up to push us back by 8pm. We then taxied over to the de-icing station because we (the passengers) had been told prior to boarding we would need to de-ice. However apparently Delta forgot to tell the de-icing crew we needed to de-ice so we sat on the tarmack until 9pm waiting for a de-icing crew which required the pilot calling Cincinnati to have them call Omaha to get a de-icing truck.

During that time (around 8:30) the Capitan also announced that we had used up all of our taxing and takeoff fuel and were now burning through our travel fuel so we would also need to refuel prior to departure. (But of course we couldn't refuel while waiting for the de-icing truck or even have the fuel truck waiting to refuel us immediately after we finished de-icing) We had to wait until 9:25 for the fuel truck to come and refill our tanks. We didn't take off from Omaha until 9:30. Luckily there were no other planes left at the airport so we were 1st for take-off or I'm sure we would have had to wait for all the other planes to take off first. :)

We arrived into Atlanta at 12:05 pm only to have to sit out in front of the gate while we waited for a gate crew to guide the plane in. (We were told that we surprised Atlanta because they weren't expecting any planes).

I only have 2 questions here?

1. I thought air traffic control was supposed to keep track of all planes at all times, so how could Atlanta not know we were coming?? And

2. There was a whole plane full of people waiting to depart to Syracuse NY on our plane after we arrived so how could they depart without a plane???? (It's not rocket science people)

Once we got off the plane in Atlanta we were told we would have to either pay for a hotel or stay at the airport because our plane was actually delayed due to weather and delta doesn't pay for weather delays....

The gate attended was then faced with 45 very upset passengers.

She accused us of trying to get something from free from the airline. (I suppose she thought that during the hour and a half we were stranded on the tarmac we all got together to make up the exact same story about mechanical problems and a free hotel????) After another 45 minute wait she was able to verify our delay was not weather related and finally agreed to print hotel travel vouchers...

And it gets even better.

The hotel was not one of the 5 hotels within 5 minutes from the airport. Oh no, the hotel was 25 minutes from the airport. The hotel knew we were coming but didn't do anything to advance check anyone in and of course there was only one person working the front counter. I did not get checked into my room until 2:45 am and of course the heat had been shut off so it was freezing and there weren't any blankets on the bed.

I was able to switch my 8:45am flight today to the 11am flight so I could get a little more sleep (5 hours beats 3). When I arrived at the airport to check in via the kiosk (which I verified with a delta skymiles agent that I could check-in via kiosk without issue) I couldn't check in because it showed that my flight (the 8:45am flight) had already left and that I could only fly stand by. Having none of this and not wanting to take the chance of not making it home today because I was assigned a stand by seat I of course spoke to a counter agent. After 20 minutes the counter agent was finally able to print my boarding pass for the 11am flight because I did in fact have a confirmed seat on the flight.

Still not done...

The flight out of Atlanta was delayed by about 30 minutes so I didn't get into Fort Lauderdale until 1:30 (instead of the scheduled 1pm). I made it to long term storage without incident but encountered two accidents on my way home so the usually 30 minute drive took an hour. I finally arrived home at 2:30pm a full 14 hours after my original scheduled arrival time.

On the plus side I didn't have to wait for baggage claim because my bag came in on the 8:45am flight so it was already waiting for me when I arrived. (It's the little things)

Got to love Holiday, winter travel.