I got up early today so that I'd have a chance to say goodbye to Anara before she left for school, and I hoped to see Shawn briefly before she left for work at 6:00 a.m. Shawn was pulling away from the curb when I came downstairs, so I had to content myself with reading her kind note and leaving a note for her. I did get a chance to talk with Anara and give her a warm hug before she bicycled away to school.
Chris rode the bus with me and got off at the Max to make sure I could find my way. I waved goodbye to him and got on the Red Line to the Airport. The train stops right at the airport, which is the end of the line, so that's an easy ride. I was in plenty of time to go to the Alaska ticket counter and pick up my boarding passes and head for the gate. The flight to Orange County was uneventful, but when I deplaned, a man at the flight board asked what flight I was on, and when I told him, he said that all American flights were being cancelled.
That was the start of a bad travel experience. No one had any real information, least of all the American employees. I talked with the flight crew for the plane I was scheduled to fly on, and they admitted that they had not been informed of any problems before they showed up at the gate. My flight was not cancelled, but it was delayed enough that there was no way I could make my connection in Dallas for my flight to McAllen. I spoke with a friendly American employee at one of the gates, and she rebooked me on the first flight to McAllen in the morning and told me there would be someone at the gate with hotel vouchers and such.
That was the last nice thing that happened. My flight was overbooked so they asked for volunteers to take a later flight in exchange for a $300 flight credit. I was the first to volunteer, but they ended up not needing any volunteers, so the net result was that I was almost the last to board the plane. They wanted to gate check my roll aboard through to McAllen, but I asked for it to be sent just to DFW, since I expected to spend the night there. After a brief mixup, the gate attendant waved me aboard with the suitcase. The flight crew weren't too happy about that, but miraculously, a place was found in the overhead bin after some rearranging.
At DFW, I found myself in a long line of people waiting at the gate to speak to one rather unfriendly AA employee about rebooking and hotels and meal vouchers. When the young couple with a baby in front of me reached the counter, the employee told them there were no hotels. When they got understandably upset, she was exceptionally rude to them.
It was late, and I was resigned to spending the night on a cot at the airport. First I ate dinner at pretty much the only open restaurant in the area, Papasita's. The $12 dinner voucher didn't go very far toward covering my meal. Cots were dropped off, and people set them up wherever they wanted. It was a long time before blankets arrived, and no pillows were ever seen. I did score a Smarte Carte while I was out walking the terminal for exercise, and that made it much easier to tote all my stuff and walk around.
For the record, almost all of the AA employees and other folks I ran into were very friendly and helpful, at least as far as they were able to be, given that they didn't know very much about the developing situation.
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