Airport Madness

Sharon and I flew to Indiana this past weekend to attend and wedding and visit the home folk.
I get some good rates on Airline tickets through work, but there's one major catch: they're all standby tickets. We've used them several times before and we've always made every flight and everything always went smooth.

It all started Thursday morning at 3:00 am when we got up to drive to the Pensacola (about 1 hour away). Everything was going just fine.

5:00 a.m.
We arrived at the Pensacola Airport where we were supposed to catch the 6:20 a.m. flight to Atlanta. We finally get through security, which by the way, is a joke nowadays. We make it to our gate and start what would prove to be one of the longest days of our lives.

6:00 a.m
Boarding for the 6:20 flight begins. Confirmed and ticketed passengers pour onto the plane and it begins to fill up. I don't like the look on the gate agent's face; he looks a little stressed. They usually wait 10 minutes before departure to start calling standby passengers by priority. There are three other standbys ahead of us and they barely made it. In the last minute, a couple and their two kids come running, and get on just in the nick of time, and I begin thinking "if only the would have caught one more red light". Needless to say, the gate closed with the gate agent saying "sorry guys, we're full, we'll have to get you on the next one.

7:00 am
Waiting...

8:00 am
...still waiting...

9:00 am
...waiting some more...

10:00 am
Flight full again. No deal.

11:00 am
Waiting again...

12:00 pm
...waiting again some more...

1:45 pm
There are two seats left, so the agent tells us to embark. Quickly we run down the jet bridge and get on. Sharon sat in an empty, first-class seat, and I was told to go to 16C, where to my dismay, it was already occupied. ARRRRRGGGGH! So close! We disembark.

We're promised a seat on the next flight out (at 3:00 pm) since it had plenty of empty seats.

3:00 pm
AT LAST! We're on and confirmed. A huge sigh of relief from both of us. We couldn't imagine or possibly bear another grueling minute in a tiny airport with absolutely nothing to do.

We make our connecting flight in Atlanta and arrive to our final destination in Indianapolis at 8:30 pm. Sharon's mom picked us up and drive us to Jeffersonville, which is about 2 hours away. So we don't actually make it there until around 11 pm when we should have made it to Indianapolis by 11:00 am and to Jeff about 1pm. Talk about a LONG day.

Every other time we flew standby, I would always bring my carry-on bag with my laptop and iPod just in case we ever got stuck. Never happened. This time, I decided it was too much of a hassle through security and we always make all our flights. Bad move. We were stuck 10 HOURS in the Pensacola airport with absolutely NOTHING to do. We couldn't even call anyone because we only had about 20 minutes left on our cell minutes, which didn't renew till the next day. We eventually bought a crossword book and that kept us busy for a little while and made time go by just a little bit faster. There was just one place to eat, a place called Veona's. Since they were monopolizing the food industry of the airport, they price gouged like nothing.

I would never wish what we went through upon anyone. The way back was smoother, even though we took a chance and took the last flights out of both cities. It was tight, but we made it just as those dreadful feelings of being stuck in Atlanta overnight came over me (I did that before too, but that story is for another day).

I've decided a couple of things after this ordeal:

#1. I'm never leaving my laptop and iPod home.
#2. We're not flying for a very very long time.