American Airlines: "If We Can Start the First Engine, We'll Fly to Dallas."

Captions: Left, the view outside our airplane as Sarah and I left Salt Lake City in the mountains; right, our daughter Sarah Rose Conzemius, 26, photographed at the Red Butte Gardens in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains of Salt Lake City.

As my daughter Sarah and I left Salt Lake City Thursday morning, July 16, 2015, American Airlines bumped us off of our first flight, although the flight hadn’t taken off yet, and put us on the next flight leaving at 9:08 a.m.

“Hurry!” The ticket agent told us. “You might still be able to catch your flight!”

Later we noticed that we’d already been bumped to the next flight. It said so on our tickets. Even though we had priority clearance (why, I don’t know), the airline kept me waiting to be screened for my two artificial hips, even though the woman who eventually screened me was standing there the entire time. Her incomprehensible indolence delayed us from boarding our original flight. Nobody else was standing there waiting to be screened. Just me.

On the flight we were bumped to, the first engine didn’t start. The pilot announced a delay. He said something about mechanics. No mechanics worked on the engine. After numerous starts and delays, at least one caused by “lack of support from the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport staff,” we were told that we were deboarding to another plane. Then we were told there was no plane to switch to.

“I make it a policy not to apologize to passengers for situations beyond my control,” the pilot came out from the cockpit to say to us, “but I feel I must apologize to you for the delays and the fact that we must leave on this [possibly defective] plane.”

A little gal from Jackson, Mississippi, a slender woman who was so sweet she stowed my carry-on suitcase for me without me even asking her to, began to cry and pray. Another woman walked back and forth to the bathroom on the plane, crying softly.

I told the little gal from Jackson that everything was going to be okay. All we had to do was stay in the air for two hours from Salt Lake City to Dallas/Fort Worth and then we’d be getting on another plane to go the rest of the way.

Sarah and I were going to catch our connecting flight that day, however. She was not. She was going to get home the next day, while we were going to get to Moline at 7:00 p.m. the same day, God willing. She was not sure she was going to get home at all.

Sarah and I remained calm. We not only were calm, but we felt we had to be calm for the sake of the few people who were losing it.

Miraculously, the American Airlines plane stayed in the air till we landed at Dallas/Fort Worth, an absolutely enormous city whose blinking lights stretched out on the flat surface of Texas for a very long time. Before we landed and before I knew we were in Texas, I thought I could see scattered areas of flooding. It seems like I saw an awful lot of bodies of water for a state that had been bone dry, even on fire, when Rick Perry ran for president (without eyeglasses) the last time.

I just have to fly two more times to New York City and back in August. And yes, I’m flying American again. The only thing that comforts me is that I’ve heard worse things about United.

“They [the airlines] don’t care,” someone on the plane said. “They don’t have to.”

The pilot cared, though. He was clearly embarrassed.