The airlines have some serious work to do to bring my faith back. From the time I got to the airport in LA to the time I left the OKC airport to pickup my kids, about thirteen hours had elapsed. I am SO tired of traveling via commercial airlines for the moment. I'm sure I'll get over it, but sheesh...
The catalyst to everything was essentially my fault. But there was no recovering gracefully on this day. Up until now we had been traveling as a group. Though I should have known better as we had been split up on several occasions. Well, we all left for the airport at 5:30am for our 8:00am flight. However when we were all doing our curbside check in the curb guy says "I don't see you on this flight". The bottom (being that which was holding the blood in my head) dropped out right then. I couldn't believe, so I looked (carefully this time) at my itinerary... departure time 7:07am. I looked at the current time at that point... 6:37am. My thoughts at the moment... O M G. So I look at my co-worker and say, this is really bad, to which she replies, oh yeah, it's bad. So I immediately book it inside, first to the self-service electronic ticket line. All I could think was that they start boarding thirty minutes before departure time and there I was still needing to check-in, check my bag, have my bag inspected, and go through security screening. At LAX. How is this possible within the knwon laws of physiscs I remember thinking. So I asked the first official looking person I could find walking around if I had enough time. She looks at my itinerary and replies, "you've pretty much already missed it", pointing to a sign that says there's a forty- minute cut-off for bags to be on the plane before departure time to ensure they aren't lost. She says I need to be "in the other line". I know what line she speaks of and I have great fears. It's the international flights/I stupidly missed my flight can you please fix it line.
So I go to the line which is five rows long on the inside of the airport (each roped-off row being maybe thirty-five yards wide) and I try to get in it, at which point a lady guarding the apparent entrance says, sir, the line starts outside. Again with the O M G. So I go outside and sure enough there's more line out on the sidewalk of LAX, maybe another twenty-five yards worth. So I'm in this line for about an hour and forty-five minutes. Having WAY missed my original flight and the flight I was hoping to get moved to (with my coworkers), I got put on a flight departing at 11:45am. This made me real glad I woke up at 4:15am. So I went through bag inspection and security screening largely without incident, and went up to my gate, grabbing some breakfast along the way. So at this point it's about 8:30am and I know I have another three hours to wait, so I call the cell phone of a coworker to leave a status message, thinking they're long gone. But he answers his phone. ??? Turns out their 8:00 flight was delayed two hours to 10:15. But I still can't be put on that flight as it is full, but a quick updated itinerary check shows that we're all back on the same flight from Dallas to OKC. We just depart LAX an hour appart, which doesn't seem so bad.
So after waiting two hours in the terminal with my coworkers, they board their plane to Dallas (after four gate changes and some delays, not a good sign). I figure I'll catch back up with them in Dallas. But then my flight goes through a couple of gate changes, and a delay. Instead of departing LAX at 11:45, it's now more like 12:30. We finally get in the air and I think it's almost over, but once we land after the three hour flight I call my coworker and ask where they are... he says they're ON THE PLANE. Ugh, I think. We've just landed and are still taxiing to the gate. He says there's no way I'll make it as they're almost done boarding and will be departing. Sure enough, by the time we got to the gate, waited there ten minutes before deplaning because there was still a plane ahead of us at the gate, I had missed the flight. So I had to get the NEXT flight from Dallas to OKC, which was departing an hour and a half later.
So I finally get to OKC about 8:40pm. By the way a check of my original itinerary shows a 1:40pm arrival time in OKC. Needless to say I was a bit behind, as well as a bit unnerved. Had I only made my original flight (which I think was the only on-time flight of the day).
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