The Saga of Flight 1234

Yesterday my sister (we'll call her "Jenny") and I started the first leg of our journey. We thought that, since it was Christmas day, it would be an easy day to travel, with light passenger traffic.

Instead, we discovered that the airport was a complete zoo.

However, this was not the worst of our problems. We initially were notified that the flight was an hour late. Then, as time went on, the flight departure time was pushed further and further into the future with no sign of when we were going to board. One hour became two hours, which became four hours, which became seven hours.

I can't really fault Southwest Airlines for this, as this was all due to the massive winter storm that covered most of the continental U.S. and completely messed up scheduling for the entire flight network. Jenny and I remained calm through all of this. However, some other passengers were rather upset. Any time anyone with a Southwest Airlines uniform showed up anywhere near the gate, they were accosted by passengers like seagulls fighting over a french fry.

Eight hours after the flight was supposed to leave, it was finally cancelled. We trekked down to baggage claim to figure out what was going to happen with our bags. We were told the bags would be flown to Los Angeles without us.

We went to the ticket counter to see if we could get booked on another flight. The line was like the line for a ride at Disneyland in that it was full of screaming children and lasted hours. Once we reached the front of the line, the Southwest ticketing system crashed and the ticket agent announced that they would only be processing refunds from that point on. We got a refund and booked a flight for the next morning on American Airlines.

By the time we reached Los Angeles, we were greeted with a sea of checked bags.

Miraculously, we found our bags in front of the pile after just two minutes.

Now that we have our bags, there is nothing stopping us from getting to Thailand.