Travel Trouble

Some of you may have been disappointed (or delighted) my byline was a rare sighting last week on Attleboro Patch. The reason for the scarcity is because my girlfriend Pammy and I were in Pompano Beach, Fla. visiting my family, including my 1-year-old nephew Lev (look at the pictures, isn't he adorable?).

While the visit was great, the return home was less than spectacular. One might call it a nightmare. Read the story below if you dare, and please try to top it in the comments section below.

The trouble began in the hours leading up to our scheduled flight time of 8 p.m. when I looked at the website for the airline I will not name and saw our plane was delayed at least two and a half hours. There had been a thunderstorm most of the day and much of the previous day, so it was understandable there could be some chain reaction delays affecting the entire East Coast.

We arrived at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport at about 9:30 p.m., early enough to catch the flight that would hopefully take off at 10:30 p.m. As we waited in the gate, a man's voice came over the loudspeaker with one of those dreaded messages. There was a "mechanical problem" with the plane. A crew was working on it, and our plane should be ready "soon."

Soon came sooner than we expected, and the dreaded voice became a pleasant one telling us we would be boarding and the plane would take off not much later than the weather delay-caused departure time of 10:30 p.m. Pammy and I boarded, ready to return to Massachusetts. The flight attendant apologized to the passengers for the delay and even announced we'd get to watch the in-flight movie for free. All was good ...

About 45 minutes into the flight, the pilot announced he had bad news ... news he said he was "very sorry, so sorry" he had to deliver. The "mechanical problem" had returned (or was never solved) and the plane had to land. At this point, we had to be close to Orlando or Jacksonville, so I expected on the bright side we might get a free visit to Disney World out of this. But no, the plane would return to Fort Lauderdale and a new one was supposedly waiting for us. I briefly wondered if the "mechanical problem" was so bad, the plane had to land, how could we fly back to Fort Lauderdale? But I let it go. The pilot knew what he was doing ...

Nearly an hour later, we landed in Fort Lauderdale. You so rarely see a plane of passengers unhappy to land in Florida. When we entered the gate, we were told to walk to a new one and the plane would be there waiting for us. As the group of tired and disgruntled passengers entered the new gate, we asked the unlucky airline staff member some tough questions. 

-- Who would our new crew be?

-- The same crew

-- Did they want to be on the new plane? Could they even do it? Shouldn't they be sleeping?

-- I don't know. Yes. Um.

-- How long is this going to take?

-- Not long?

-- We want an actual number of minutes.

-- Hold on.

He then took out a microphone to make an announcement to everybody at the gate. Uh-oh.

The "new" flight was canceled. Was it ever on? There were no more flights. We all had to take flights the next day (which was actually the same day, since it was nearly 2 a.m.). The airline might pay for a hotel room.

A huge line quickly formed to be the first person to speak with the staff member about booking a new flight, and now he had two colleagues helping him out with the task. A line of tired, angry people waiting to speak to them. My heart went out to the workers.

My girlfriend Pammy is a fighter, and despite being small-framed and barely above 5 feet, she pushed her way to near the front of the line. So at least I knew we'd get a good flight for the next day (later on the same day). But then those workers to whom I had just given my heart made Pammy's fight meaningless. They said while waiting in line, people could also call the airline to book new flights. Pammy didn't bother doing that as she was so close to the front, but of course the line didn't move much as the computers at first were broken, then had to be rebooted ... then the first person in line had some complicated error that all three staff members had to deal with. Soon, Pammy was closer to the front of the line because she and a few others were the only people in it.

When she, and now me, were finally able to talk to the staff, they said they had no flights available until very late in the day. That wasn't good enough. Pammy needed to be in Boston by 11 a.m. After some convincing of the staff that this was a fact, they found a 6 a.m. flight that would take us from Fort Lauderdale to New York City, and then we had 20 minutes to catch a connecting flight to Boston. What could go wrong?

As everything was being finalized, the staff member gave us a nifty nugget of information. The plane never needed to land. The "mechanical problem" wasn't that big of a deal and it was just that the pilot didn't feel like flying. He was reading this off a company email on his phone. I'm not sure if he was supposed to let the passengers know this. But since we were the only ones left, I guess he felt it was OK to deliver the information. Lucky us to learn the awful truth.

After fetching our luggage, waiting (briefly sleeping) in the airport, we hopped aboard our new flight. The connection actually worked fine. Phew! And soon we were at Logan. The epic journey at least ended well.

Do you have a terrible travel story? Share it in the comments section below or go to here to blog about it.