More Travel Craziness

I honestly tried to avoid getting home at midnight...

I received the e-mail to go home Saturday afternoon, but by then all of the flights would have gotten me in very late, so I asked for a flight on Sunday. Found one at 11am. Booked it. Ordered Thai for dinner, finished packing and watched movies in my hotel room.

Got up early, made sure I had everything, and headed out towards the airport. Filled up rental car with gas on the way and dropped it off. Bought breakfast and sat around waiting for the plane, which is where the last post came in, and finally boarded.

We made fantastic time to Detroit (layover) and then it all went sour from there. We circled for about a half an hour. Our pilot saying they were having horrible weather and tornado warnings in Detroit. Tornado! So we circled some more and finally he apologized, saying we had to go to Ohio to refuel. *entire airplane groans*

We landed and refueled. That took another 45 min or so. I was supposed to be on a 3:40 flight to Providence, but that time flew past while we were still on the ground in Toledo. Finally we were up in the air again, never even reached cruising altitude, and landed finally in Detroit.

More chaos! All flights for that hour or so had not been allowed to leave or to land. By the time we landed my flight was gone, so all of our passengers scurried over to kiosks and help desks. There were scanners that would read your boarding pass and if you'd already been rescheduled, they printed out a new boarding pass for your new flight! Mine printed out a phone number and told me to call it or go to see a ticketing agent.

I called the number and the first person who answered I swear I don't know how he got the job. I had to continually tell him that there were weather delays and therefore I had missed my connection. "I need to reschedule a flight, mine was canceled due to weather in Detroit." "Okay, what's the flight number" Mutter flight number and where I'm trying to go. "I don't understand, the flight you gave me wasn't canceled, why weren't you on it?" "No, we were stuck circling because we couldn't land because of tornado warnings." "Oh, so you wanted to change your flight to tomorrow morning?" "No, I want a flight tonight, there's one that's been delayed til 7:30 and one at 9:45." "Oh, okay! Let me put you on hold so I can reissue a ticket." Music plays, then the phone is ringing again and a woman's voice answers "Hello, how can I help you?" Needless to say, I was not happy, but she rescheduled me in about 3 minutes as opposed to the 10 I had spent with the other person.

So I was stuck at the Detroit airport til 9:45 and didn't get to Providence til 11:45 or home til after midnight. I did find a delicious Japanese restaurant and ordered vegetable tempura and ramen for dinner. Real ramen, not microwave ramen. Bought a new book while I was there, and wandered through a bunch of shops. I swear it was the longest terminal I had ever been in. It had to be over a mile long. It had it's own express tram.

That was my second travel catastrophe. I am 2 for 2 on travel blunders so far!