An Alabama Adventure

One day after returning from Las Vegas, we headed off to Alabama for a family wedding. The original plan was for Philip to fly out on Thursday with our son, then I would bring our daughter on Friday. We were booked on flights from Dallas to Jackson, Mississippi.

I could write a loooong post about how everything unfolded, but I'll just give you the bullet points.

The Thursday afternoon flight to Jackson was cancelled due to "mechanical" issues.
Philip and our son were automatically rerouted to Jackson on a flight scheduled to depart Friday morning. This would not do, because our son needed to ba in Alabama for the rehearsal for his debut as the Worlds Best Ring Bearer.

We got them rerouted to Birmingham, Alabama on an 8pm flight. This left Philip entertaining a 6 year old at DFW for three extra hours...always a joy.

Philip's luggage, of course, didn't make it with him on the flight. I mean, why would it? They only had three extra hours to make the transition.

By the time they arrived at their final destination it was about 1am

Our daughter and I were booked on the very same flight to Jackson on Friday. I picked her up early from school in order to standby on the earlier flight.

We did not clear the standby list for the earlier flight.

Unbelievably, the very same flight was cancelled for at least the second day in a row, ostensibly for the same reason: "mechanical"

Once again, AA automatically rerouted us for a flight the next morning. Not acceptable.

We got to the front of the line and learned that they had 6 seats to fly from DFW to Memphis, then connecting on Northwest airlines on to Jackson. We took two of the seats.

Gradually, it became obvious that the Memphis flight was becoming delayed to the point where the last connection of the day to Jackson was not going to happen.

We then requested to be rerouted on the same 8pm flight to Birmingham that Philip and our son had been on the day before. Simply unbelievable. I, however, had one requirement. Since it had been more than 24 hours and Philip still hadn't seen his luggage, I required that they pull my luggage off the flight and send it up to me in baggage claim and let me check it on the Birmingham flight. If they could not produce my luggage before the Birmingham flight departed I was committed to staying home. If my luggage took as long to catch up with me as Philip's did to catch up with him I would have to miss the wedding due to not being able to get dressed!

After a long period of time (2.5 hours!) in the American Eagle Baggage Service Office which deserves a blog post of its very own, it was determined our luggage actually made the 3:30pm flight that we did not make. My suitcase was sitting in Jackson, Mississippi.

As it happens, the courier had just left Jackson to deliver my husband's bag to him over two hours away at his parent's house. They were able to call the courier back to the airport to pick up my bag and deliver it with my husband's bag.

Net effect: My suitcase arrived at my inlaws before I landed in Birmingham.

Okay, so it turned out to be a long post anyway. I don't think we'll be flying to Alabama again any time soon. The nine hour drive is actually faster than messing with American Airlines.