Finally Back from Vacation!

What a week! Last Wednesday Greg and I left for Pawley's Island, South Carolina. His family has vacationed there every year since he was three. It was a nice vacation. It rained quite a bit so we didn't get much beach time in, but it was nice to visit with Greg’s family.

My stomach was bothering me on and off Friday and Saturday. I think I may have picked up a mild stomach bug, but several people asked me if I was pregnant :P

Here are some pictures from this weekend:

Greg and I on the Dock at Night

Wow...Look at all the Stars

Now for the story of our trip home: It was awful! We were supposed to get home on Sunday night, but we did not make it back until last night (Tuesday). We stopped over in Atlanta on our way home. However, some storms in Atlanta shut down the airport for several hours, which cause tons of chaos.

When we checked in at Myrtle Beach, we were told our flight to ATL was 3 hours delayed because of the storms, and we were rebooked on an earlier flight to ATL so we could make our connection to Austin. However, as we were taxing to the runway, an engine caught fire and the cabin filled with smoke! At first we didn’t know what was going on – it was just very hot and smelled as if someone had gotten sick. Then the flight attendant told us what was going on and pointed out the smoke. Scary! Thank God we were still on the ground when this happened!

After deboarding the smoky plane, we saw the gate agent, who told us our flight from ATL to AUS was also delayed and we should make it, but he got us confirmed seats on a later flight to AUS just in case. He said that, if we miss the first flight, we just needed to get our boarding passes printed at the gate for the second flight in ATL.

So, we flew to Atlanta and then sat on the runway for an hour and a half. Then we sprinted (as much as we could…the airport was SO crowded!) to the first AUS flight, which is cancelled about 15 minutes after we got to the gate. So we went to the gate of the second Austin flight and wait in line for THREE HOURS to get our boarding passes printed. However, when we tried to board the plane and the gate agent told us "whoops, you don't have seats on this flight...you have seats on the TUESDAY NIGHT flight" At this point it was 1 AM and it was all I could do to not cry.

Delta wouldn’t put us up in a hotel because the delay was weather related, but I was able to find a hotel with available rooms and made a reservation. We then waited in the taxi line for another hour, got to the hotel and waited in line to check in for a half hour, and finally make it to bed at 4 am. We took a cab to the mall the next day because Delta wouldn’t even give us our luggage during our two day wait to fly home, so we needed a change of clothes and some deodorant, (and I used this as an excuse to buy some fancy moisturizer ;).

The airport was INSANE on Sunday night. There were thousands of people in the same boat as us. The line to be rebooked was over 5 hours long, and all it did was go to a bank of phones that called India! One man said he waited in that line only to wait on hold for another half hour. Another woman we talked to waited in line to speak with a gate agent for four hours, was five people from the front, and the agent said, "We’re closing, come back tomorrow morning."

Now, I completely understand the airport had to be shutdown for safety, flights were cancelled for safety, and we couldn’t get on a flight for two days because there simply wasn’t enough room for us. I even understand why Delta can’t afford to put a few thousand people up in a hotel room. But:

Dear Delta,

Please hire more employees to help us stranded passengers. Standing in line for 3-5 hours just to learn what the heck is going on is unacceptable. In addition, please include more baggage handlers when you do this hiring, because, the least you could do is give us our luggage if we are going to be stuck for two days. I would pay a lot more for a ticket if it meant that I wouldn’t have to go through this again.

Sincerely,
Pissed-off in Texas

The 5 Hour Rebooking Line - The Length of the Entire Terminal, in Both Directions!