Saturday, August 30, 2008

The Day in the SLC Airport

We left Elko, NV to live the next four years in the Dominican Republic on Friday morning at 5:30am. Of course we didn't get to bed until 11p and got up for 2 feedings before the alarm went off at 3:30a. But hey...the kids and I have 3 weeks of r&r in TX before heading to the DR.

To start off the day we got labeled SSSS (which means everything you are taking with you on your trip gets searched and you get padded down by the TSA)...so much fun. It really wasn't that bad and considering that in the past 4mths alone I've flown four times, I think we were about due to be "randomly" searched at the airport.

Got to SLC on time (7:30a central time) to find out that our 8:50a flight had been postponed to 1:55p due to a mechanical problem. It was our first time to fly AA out of SLC. We got to the ticket counter to find not a soul in sight, but leave it to my hubby to make himslef at home and go behind the counter to find a # to find someone to help us. Unfortunately help was only outside of security, but Scotty left the terminal anyways...FYI once you're labeled SSS, you are that for the entire day!

There was no good news at the counter for us except that we were guaranteed to get on a 4:30p flight because our plane had serious mechanical problems that were going to take all day to fix (our original flight ended up being pushed to 6am the next day!) There was some hope though b/c there were an 11:50a and 1:30p flights to DFW to try to catch. However they were overbooked and had long standby lists. After catching a late lunch around 3p, we headed to our gate to get on the 4:30p flight. Guess what! It was delayed until 5:40p due to "weather" in Dallas...no such bad weather was actually happening though. We finally loaded onto our 5:40p flight and began to taxi. Whoo-hoo! So we thought....

Our plane was having a mechanical problem that had stopped any airflow so we headed back. By this time it was just time to cry! We all unboarded and Scotty booked a flight for the next morning at 6:10a to be on the safe side. Thankfully though we were able to get back on the plane (ironically the plane that we were to get on that morning) and took off around 8:30p. But before we could leave they ahd to take a light off of the broken plane and put it on ours! Got to DFW around 12a...literally 12hours later than we were suppose to.

The kids were great! Only ran out of diapers by the time we loaded onto the flight and there was a Great-Grandmother with her great-granddaughter who I was able to borrow one from for Adeline. Her story was much worse than ours....she had been keeping the ggdaughter for the last 6mths or so while both parents were in Iraq and she was trying to get to Jacksonville to meet up with them to drop her off. She had to find a hotel or stay in the airport all night in DFW to board a 6am flight this morning.

Like I said though at the first, we fly a lot and this has never happened...it was the first AA flight...hmmmm....