The Trip That Wasn't

So, since Rick is now a Monday thru Friday 9 to 5-er we both have a 3-day weekend for the 4th. We decided to take Monday off as well and go to Erie for the weekend.

I listed us on a flight from Phoenix to Philly to Erie a couple of weeks ago and have been diligently watching to see if it looked like we would make it. On Tuesday there were still plenty of seats to get everyone there, and we were feeling pretty frisky about the whole thing.

By Thursday, most of the seats were sold, employees had come out of the woodwork to list for the remaining seats and I was driving myself crazy trying to get creative with routes and other airline schedules..

Empty seats are given out on a seniority basis, so even though we listed a couple of weeks ago, if someone more senior than Rick lists an hour before the flight they get to walk right on. When they were America West it went by whoever checked in for the flight first, so I would sometimes set an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to log in exactly 12 hours before the flight. That way, we were first in line. But that all changed with the USAirways merger, and since 100's of the USAir employees have years more seniority flying back east is risky.

I had listed us on the Philly to Erie flight, but also knew that one we got to Philly we had the option of Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. And, I had listed us to go straight from Phoenix to Pittsburgh if we didn't get on the Philly flight.

So Friday morning we get to the airport at 5am pretty sure we are in for disappointment. But to our delight, we were the first and only non-revs whose names were called and we were on our way to Philly. I was feeling pretty sporty about things at that point. I was fairly confident that we would be enjoying the Barnes resort for the weekend.

We arrived in Philly and had to walk a ways over to the shuttle buses to another terminal. We rode the bus, arrived at the gate an hour before departure only to find out that the flight was oversold and no non-revs were going to be flying to Erie. The agent did tell us that there was a flight to Cleveland leaving in 30 minutes that had seats available, but it was back at the terminal we had just come from, so we had to hustle. We arrived at the gate with 10 minutes to spare, but there was no agent in sight. There was another guy there who had a paid ticket that was also milling around needing to get on, but as it turned out we were all out of luck. When the agent did reappear, she said the flight was closed, (10 minutes before it should have) and it left with 5 empty seats. We looked in to Pittsburgh, which had 7 empty seats, but there were 47 people listed for it, and Buffalo was oversold as well. We toyed with the idea of staying in Philly and trying it all again in the morning, but the flights didn't look any more promising. I suggested Daytona, Nashville and a couple of other alternatives but my traveling companion was unimpressed, so in the end we listed on the flight that was coming right back to Phoenix. As luck would have it, there were over 50 seats available. What does that tell you? That no one wants to be in Phoenix in the summer. Including me.

So, we spent a 16-hour day and when all was said and done, we basically flew to Philadelphia to have lunch at the airport and come home.

Hope you all have a better 4th of July weekend than we are.