Just How Bad is American Airlines?

Lemme tell you.

We were supposed to take off at 4:55 on the first leg of our trip to California for my grandmother's funeral. The plane was delayed. Fortunately, we were able to hop an earlier flight. This one was also delayed just enough that it got us into Dallas at the time we should have landed anyway had we taken the later flight (if the later flight had been on time).

What?

We are some kind of canny travellers, we congratulated ourselves. We will make our connection for sure now! But then the flight to Fresno was unaccountably delayed. For 2 hours.

Now, there's a 2 hour time difference anyway between the midwest and the west coast, so that meant instead of getting in at 11:30 midwest time, we would now be getting in at 1:30 a.m. midwest time. And so we did. After getting the car and finding the hotel and getting our clothes unpacked and hung so as to be all purty for the next day, it was 12:30 California time -- or 2:30 in the morning for us, if you're keeping up.

Funeral Day went without a hitch. We were buffed, fluffed and on time for everything. We reconnected with family, had some laughs, shed some tears. It was good, in spite of feeling a little jet-laggy.

To get home, we had to take a 6:15 a.m. flight. That meant getting up at 3:45 a.m. CA time, or 5:45 for us. Early, but doable. The flight took off ON TIME. It was the only part of our trip that would bear that distinction.

2.5 hours into the trip, the captain came on to tell us that Dallas was experiencing a hail/thunderstorm "event." We were in a holding pattern until they reopened the airport. Thirty minutes later, he came on again to tell us that we were too low on fuel to keep holding and were being rerouted to Oklahoma City to refuel.

It so happens that Oklahoma City wasn't quite ready for us. We landed, but then sat on the ground for 2 hours until we finally got fuel and were able to take off for the 1/2 hour flight to Dallas.

In Dallas, we had a slim hope of catching our connection, which was also delayed because of the storm. However, we had to change terminals and in Dallas, unless you are Ussein Bolt and can sprint around the airport, you are at the mercy of the shuttle trains. You go as fast as they go, and that's it. We arrived at our new gate as they shut the door to the plane.

If you don't travel much, you should know that once they shut the door, they do not open it again, not even if you're President Obama. Well, maybe for him. But certainly not for us.

Okay, Plan B: we got ourselves confirmed on the 2:40 flight, which was now leaving at 3:40. 2:40 was the time we were supposed to be arriving home. So, we'd be a little late.

At 3:40, we were still sitting at the gate.

At 4:00 we were still sitting at the gate.

At 4:30 the monitor changed to say that our new departure time would be 7:30 p.m.

At 4:31, one of us started crying and two of us laughed at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. The fourth was in a funk.

Three hours later we finally got on a plane and made it home. We were on tenterhooks, just waiting for them to suddenly cancel our flight altogether. We were wound tighter than bedsprings until the plane actually took off.

We spent 14 hours either in an airport or on a plane that day. Many, many people were in similar situations. Several people told us they fly with AAL all the time and this was not an uncommon occurance. One man told us he'd been tracking his travel for the last year and out of 36 trips, only two legs of all those trips were on time. Other people told us similar stories.

Does anyone out there remember when it was fun to fly? When flying represented the height of adventure?

Now it's just a long, hard slog and it doesn't show any signs of improving.