American Airlines Flight Delay

We recently went to Kohler, Wisconsin, for a three-night getaway only minutes from a toilet factory. The morning started off fine; I woke up every hour, wondering why alarm hadn’t gone off, just to realize that it was only 1:30, 2:25, 3:50. Finally, it was 4:45am, only two hours from our board time at the airport, and we kicked into action. My bag was packed, and had been so for days, so I was ready. I took my first xanax while B showered, put on the clothes I had picked out a week ago, and questioned whether I had brought the right clothes and remembered the charger I purposefully have in triplicate so I can keep it in my suitcase. 

Our flight boarded on time, and we both had aisle seats across from each other; the flight attendant had already comforted me and told me we weren’t expecting turbulence, and I had popped a xanax, ready for a quick flight to Charlotte and a connection to Milwaukee. 

And then we sat. The pilot, bless him, told us that the little door thing that connects to the plane (I don’t know the lingo, okay? You know what I mean) wouldn’t detach, and we had to wait until someone from the big city came and moved it. 

We sat on the tarmac for about an hour. I didn’t panic, because we still had time for our layover, and the issue wasn’t with the plane but with the airport itself, but it was still really annoying. 

Then we sat for another half an hour. Now I knew we were going to miss our connection, and we started desperately searching for new flights. And people on board were getting angry.

Let’s count together, shall we? I had two xanax at this point, and was feeling fine. Sleepy, but fine. But when I realized we weren’t going to make our next flight, and probably not get to Wisconsin that day, I was…stressed. Really stressed. 

Because B was stressed. And mad. Which stressed me out, because he’s usually the one holding us together when it comes to logistics.

So if he was panicking, I should be panicking.

We finally took off, and the flight was short and smooth, and we landed not 30 minutes later in Charlotte…10 minutes after our next flight took off.

The next flight? 6 hours later. 

American Airlines was so great, though. While we were in the air, bickering about how we were going to get to Wisconsin, and B complaining that our vacation was already ruined, American was finding us a new route and securing our seats. We weren’t standby; we were confirmed on the next flight out to Wisconsin that afternoon.

Yes, it was delayed. Yes, we missed our dinner reservations. Yes, we didn’t get the car we requested at the rental car place. But we got there with very little inconvenience. We even got lunch vouchers from American, and emergency exit row seats on our flight with more leg room. It was so helpful that they just took care of our delay, with no work on our part. Thank you, American, for making our stressful travel delay a lot better.