The Hotel Love Field Adventure

What a trip! In all of the trips that we’ve taken, this was our first time to spend the night in an airport. To recap, we woke up to bone chilling cold and snow and our flight is scheduled to depart at 12:50 pm. When we left our house at 10:00 the snow in Graham had stopped and the roads were clear but about 5 miles from the airport the snow started and was heavy, the roads started getting slick, but airplanes were still taking off. We dropped our luggage off at curbside check-in then Bill took the car to the parking garage while Tonya waited for him to make their way for security.

Since Tonya had her knees replaced the trip thru security can be a little time consuming, so traveling without Bill is not often an option (someone needs to be able to grab her stuff off of the conveyor belt while she is being “wanded”) but it is a system that we have perfected.

Our flight was postponed to 1:15, then 2:30, and then they thought we might have a plane in range. When it came time to board it was 3:30 still not departing (de-icing) until nearly 4 o’clock. The plane was packed like sardines and by this time we know we will have missed our connecting flight from Kansas City to Dallas.

Our pilot came on the loud speaker and announced that the weather in KC had deteriorated and it appeared that we would be diverted to St. Louis but he would let us know more as soon as more information becomes available. We did land in KC about 10:00 pm, and we knew we had missed our connection to Dallas but a “pit stop” seemed most important at that time.

Once we had settled down we discovered we had not missed our connection afterall. Flights had been delayed all over the country. We boarded our plane to Dallas about 11:15, then we sat on the tarmac for a bit, waited for the deicer fairy to come sprinkle our aircraft with fairy dust so we could actually depart at midnight.

We landed in Dallas to a balmy 68° at 2:00 am on Friday morning. Our 2 bags made it just fine, but we couldn’t locate our box… this would be the box with all of our Christmas presents in it. It was a special box, and we couldn’t find it. It seems that SWA thought our special Christmas box was cargo and took it to their cargo area. By this time it was 3am, we were exhausted and the hotel we reserved was another 30 minutes away when the 2 of us developed a plan B.

Plan B—Flight #2009 to Amarillo departs at 6:35 am (we were booked on a 10:00 am flight), we shall try to catch some sleep in Love Field, be in line as soon as the ticket counter open and get on the first flight out to AMA as we could. We were successful and we landed in Amarillo about 7:30 am. and made our way to Mom's house where a clean, warm, king size bed was waiting on us.

LESSON'S LEARNED:

• The best made plans don't always cooperate with Mother Nature!!!
• Benches at the airport can never compete with the Marriott