Flight to Pennsylvania

Our flight to Philadelphia was scheduled to leave Saturday morning at 10:50. We picked this flight because Nick worked Friday night and doesn't get home until 8. That gave us just enough time to hurry to the airport. And it was a direct flight so we would get to Philly by 2:30. We were happy that we found such a perfect flight... so Saturday morning comes. And I am getting ready its about 7:30 am and I thought, "I wonder how long our flight is? And I wonder if I can check us in now so we don't have to do that when we get there?" So I get online to go figure all that out. Thats when I see, "Oh my gosh our flight leaves at 8:10 and is boarding in 15 min. I text Nick saying, " I call me!! Our flight leaves at 8:10." Nick calls and swears I am looking at something wrong. He then realizes I am right and tells me to call the airlines and see what's going on. So I call them. I told them there is no way we would have booked a 8:00 flight since Nick is still at work. They tell me that since we went through a 3rd party aka priceline. That sometimes there are computer glitches and they will put you on the wrong flight etc. They also tell me that if we get to the airport before 10:00 that they can put us on the next available flight for free.

So we rush to the airport. The agent put us on the next flight which wasn't until 1:00 with a 40 min layover in Arizona. The agent told us that as long as the flight to Arizona was on time we should be able to make our connecting flight. We wouldn't get to Philly until 10:00pm now. But we were ok with that. We had things we could still do at that time. So 1:00 comes and we board our flight. It was going to be a quick 1 hour 15 minuteish flight. Well we passed the Grand Canyon. And we noticed we were flying in circles. The pilot gets on and tells us that there is lightning and thunder at the airport so they are unable to land. So we will just hang out in the air until we can land. After just going in circles for about an hour the pilot gets on again to inform us we are running out of gas. So we had to go to a different airport and refuel.

We land at the airport and wait our turn to refuel. The guy next to us calls the airlines to get on the red eye flight to Philly. He tells us to do the same. So we call. He gets on no problem. We didn't. The next open flight we got on left in the morning at 7:30 am. But we are also put on the stand by for the red eye. So now we are just sitting on the tarmac. And sitting and sitting. Finally they let us get off and walk around. So we do that for a hour. Then on the plane we go again. And more waiting on the tarmac. Finally we get back in the air. And then we had to wait our turn to land. We got off the plane in Phoenix at 8:30 pm. And we are starving. The flight attendants only gave us 2 cookies and a few drinks. And all the restaurants are closed!! Vending machine food for dinner it is. We find out we are 17 and 18 in line for stand by. So getting on that flight is not going to happen. At this point we decide we do not want to pay for a hotel since we are paying for one in Philly that we are not using since we were stuck in Arizona. So we slept in the airport.

Of course this is the one time we are lacking in what we brought in our carry ons. Nick has his suite. And I have an extra shirt for both of us and our camera. Usually we have extra clothes and a brush etc. Nope we didn't have room this time. So we try and sleep. Nick slept pretty good. I however was freezing and even used Nicks suit bag for a blanket so I couldn't sleep very well.

Finally morning comes and its time to board our flight. We got on nervous as heck that something was going to go wrong. But nothing did. We finally landed in Philadelphia at 2:30 pm. 24 hours later than we originally planned.

At the beginning of our adventure we were both annoyed and frustrated. But we decided it wasn't going to ruin our trip. And we both thought it was funny that we spent the night sleeping on the benches in the airport. And everything turned out fine. We still got to see everything we wanted to see and do everything we wanted to do.

Our little Sleeping area

Nick and his bed for the night