There are great stories from this leg though.
It started with the fact that Abi and I flew from KS City to Houston where we met up with James who flew in from Newark. Well, as soon as we met up we headed to our gate. This is not your normal gate though. It was one of those where there is a literal gate blocking off a long hallway with entrances to 10 different terminals. So in order to board, you wait outside this gate until your specific flight is called (one of ten) and then you walk down the crazy long hallway to find your actual plane. That's the best way I can describe it. So we know we're about 20 minutes from take-off and we walk right up to the people and show our boarding passes and they say, "Oh, ABQ isn't boarding yet, and you can't enter the terminal (AKA crazy long hallway) until boarding time." Ok, fine. She directs us to another guy at the desk who can help us. We inquire of him about our flight to which he responds, "It's delayed. Look at the monitor." And points us away to the departure screens. We ask about the delay, and he again says, "Just check the monitor." And shoos us off.
Fine.
So we walk over (with all our luggage and our toddler) and see that the monitor still clearly says on time departure. So now we're really confused. It's 15 minutes until take-off and they're not letting us on. So James checks his phone app and it says the plane is delayed over an hour. So we find a seat about two rows away from the desk so we can keep eyes on what's going on because again, this is the weirdest terminal/gate thing we've ever seen.
Well, I make a phone call that had to be done before business hours closed, James chases after Abi all over the open space in front of the desk, and we wait. By the way, the monitor-guy (we'll call him) and I have already met since he helped me change my seat to be in a toddler friendly row before James had arrived. Apparently not all rows have 4 oxygen masks. In all my flying, that has never happened until now. The point is, he knows us well and knows what flight we're on and Abi and I have been in the area for well over 90 minute waiting for James.
Ok, so as I'm waiting on hold with customer service on my phone, I see James playing with Abi and they go up to chat with the ticket lady as she has a break between boarding flights. Suddenly he looks at me with that face that says something is terribly wrong and I wait with no breathe or heartbeat for a few minutes while the desk people suddenly scramble, make a phone call, then say something to James after which he walks solemnly over to me to tell me we just missed our flight.
SAY WHATTTT?????!!!!!
Apparently, it was able to take off on time with NO delay. How does a plane go from not boarding to take off in 20 minutes ever?? We had been sitting/playing right in the desk area and heard NO boarding calls for ABQ. We heard lots of other boarding calls but none for ABQ. The desk people told James that they did several final boarding calls for our names specifically and despite our close proximity and their knowing us due to our seat change conversation, we never heard. How does this happen?
The scrambling that I could see happening but did not hear was the desk people calling the plane to see if the doors were closed yet and whether or not we could still board. Turns out they had just closed the doors, so even though it was still there at the terminal, they didn't allow us to board.
Needless to say, I was so mad! But, I also have to give myself credit. Had this been 5 or so years ago, I would have lost it and yelled and cried and demanded retribution. But, since then, I've had a job in customer service and been married to James and both have taught me that you get more flies with honey. So to my credit, I was able to hold it in, calm down and see this as an adventure or maybe even a blessing. I wondered if maybe this weren't God intervening in our lives to spare us some other unforeseen evil that I'll never know about until the next life.
Well, we went to their customer service desk to figure out what to do next. The lady there was so sweet and helpful! She said there is normally a $200 charge for each ticket re-booking when you miss your flight of your own actions (because we apparently were at fault for missing our flight) plus fees with the other airlines if your re-booking included working with partner airlines (which it did) and she waived all of that for us and switched our flight with no extra charge to one that was leaving later to ABQ through Dallas. We had another stop and it wouldn't arrive in ABQ until 11PM but at least it got where we needed to go. UGH! What a mess! It got worse when the flight in Dallas was delayed 2 hours so we didn't arrive in ABQ until 3AM (5AM Eastern time) but we made it!
Now does this whole thing sound fishy to anyone else? It sounds to us like they overbooked the flight and needed to bounce somebody... That's probably too elaborate to be true, but seriously! Had I not lived this experience, I wouldn't believe it.
Thanks in part to this ridiculously long day and flight, Abi and I got sick and spent the next five days with fever and chills. So that may be why we have almost no pictures - because who wants pictures of them when they were sick or has energy to take pictures when they are sick?
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| Abi just after she woke up from a nap - poor happy, sick girl! |
We did manage to have a great time with family and friends who were gracious enough to overlook our poor health. My big regret is that Abi and I missed church due to our illness so we missed seeing a lot of people I was looking forward to catching up with. What a bummer!
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| Just let me sleep! |
Do I need to even vocalize my goal to never fly this airline again???
All in all, we loved being in NM with family! Thanks NM family for loving us and taking care of us!
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