Escalator from Purgatory

There's the stairway to Heaven, and then there's the escalator from Purgatory, which is where I found myself for 16 hours on Wednesday. If you are up for a traveler's nightmare story keep reading. So Wednesday I was headed to Birmingham for meetings with Rachel and Adam. We all boarded the 8:40 flight after fighting with traffic to the airport, so naturally it felt good to be on the plane and on our way. About half way there the captain comes on the speaker and says we are headed back to DFW because of a fuel line issue. We could have made it to Birmingham, but they wanted to fix it in Dallas. So, we banked and headed home. Ok, so we miss a few meetings, it's out our control.

We get booked on the second flight of the day which isn't until 3:30 in the afternoon, which makes us debate whether to stay at the airport or go back to the office to work a couple hours there. We decided to sit tight and work at the airport. 3:30 rolls around and the plane coming in for us gets diverted to Austin due to weather and fuel. It had been circling too long. Then 20 minutes later it gets cancelled. So, American Airlines kindly books us on the next flight at 7:30. Again we decide to sit tight and wait, no need to get out in the weather or the rush hour traffic.

So, we head to find a new place to sit, preferrably a bar with something to quench our thirst and frusteration. We take the skylink to the new Terminal D, which is very nice and spend some time at a mexican food joint. At this point, we are pretty delirious and giddy, everything is funny. And we're having a good time, making the best of being stuck in our own home airport, shocked at American Airlines* lack of care for our horrible day (If I had to hear, "again we apologize for the inconvience.." don't apologize, give me some miles!)

Well things got less horrible as we dediced to supplement dinner with margaritas. After dinner, recharging our phones and computers, and general airport down time we headed to our gate, which turned out to be the first of two gates for this 7:30 flight. Naturally, as we had come to expect this flight was significantly delayed and we got moved to the other end of Terminal D, where we had been at the mexican food place. So we packed up and strolled with the masses to our new gate. Finally, finally, at 9:30 we board our flight. I'm practically falling asleep until I hear the captain say, "Folks, this flight crew started this morning in LAX and then went to Monterrey, Mexico and we are approaching our flying time cap. Taking you all to Birmingham would mean we would be flying illegally, so we're looking for a new flight crew." Mr. Captain and I had two different types of days, he was tired of traveling all over and I was tired of traveling nowhere.

Hello jetway, as we unboard for the second time that day. Eventually, at about 11:45 we boarded again, and we're in the air just before the new day began. Landing in Birmingham at about 1:45 and to the hotel by 2 or so. The three and half hours of sleep we got were quite the tease before our long day of meetings. Anyways, it all makes for a good story. And this photo is of the escalators that decended us into the airport we thought we'd never leave.

*Rachel, Adam and I are in the process of creating a children's book documenting the story. We're hoping the copy we send to American Airlines will drive home how ridiculous our day turned out to be and be in very understandable terms.