Flights from Hell

I went to San Diego this weekend and what should have been a short 1.5 hour flight in each direction turned in to much more.

After an on time departure Saturday we began our decent about an hour later over San Diego. After getting pretty low to the ground we were suddenly headed upward again. The pilot announces on the overhead that even though the sky outside our windows was completely clear the airport was fogged in so we're going to fly around for a "few minutes" in the hopes the fog will clear enough to land. 35 minutes later we attempt another landing with the same results, only this time when the pilot gets on the overhead he announces that we are now out of gas and have to make an emergency, diverted landing at the Ontario airport (just outside of LA) which is about a 25 minute flight. He says our ground time will be short. 65 minutes later we are back in the air and finally make a successful landing in San Diego - whew. The 1.5 hour flight was over after 4 hours.

Sunday - we board the plane right on time. The flight is very full but that's ok, it's only a 1.5 hour flight. Right at our scheduled departure time the pilot gets on the overhead and announces that there were some maintenance issues with the plane and the mechanics are still working on them - it should only be about 5-10 minutes and we'll be set to depart. 35 minutes later we're off. About half of the people on the very full flight have connections to make in San Francisco so we're asked to politely let them exit the plane first in order for them to make those connections - sure, not a problem. After landing, the pilot announces that there isn't a gate for us to exit from and we would have to wait on the runway until they arranged for one. We are finally assigned a gate and pull up and there is no one available to work the jetway to allow us to exit. So 60 minutes after landing we were finally off the plane. Most of the people who had connections missed them. Thankfully I didn't have to go any further. This 90 minute flight only lasted 3 hours.

What do they say about making promises you can't keep? I think that's what bothered me most - don't tell me it's going to be 5 minutes if it's really going to be 45.

Sorry to sound bitchy - I guess I just needed to vent. I'm so glad to be home.