Coming to you live from Salt Lake City, Utah.
I now have photographic evidence that checking apps for flight status is superior to waiting to be informed by the airline. I first discussed this “rule” in my first post about the Challenge of Flight.
I’m not surprised that I will be delayed today. I made it into Denver an hour early on my direct flight on Friday. I was only delayed about twenty minutes yesterday on my direct flight from Denver to Salt Lake City, even with de-icing. So, I was due for a delay. This is how it goes for me. As you can see, I realized my second flight was delayed at 9:53 a.m. local time today.
I did a quick search to see if this was a resolvable issue, but there really isn’t anything I can do.
Okay, time to board. As you can see below, I finally got a text from the airline at 11:10 a.m., more than an hour after I knew about the delay. If there was anything I could have done, I would have been way ahead of the crowd. Can’t wait to get home!
UPDATE as of 3:07 p.m. Phoenix Local Time:
So, after I sat down in my seat in Salt Lake City, I received a new text that my flight was now delayed until 4:50 p.m. After taking some beautiful pictures of the mountains,
I settled into a pattern of obsessively updating the flight status thanks to the free wifi on the plane (well, it is free as long as I just search on the Southwest app or webpage). About halfway through the flight, the new time was moved back until 5:30 p.m. This was unacceptable. I saw that I could probably make a 2:55 p.m. flight to St. Louis, and then go to Columbus from there. As soon as the flight landed, I called to see if they could make the change for me; she said I needed to deal with it at the airport since I was in mid-itinerary. I deplaned and rushed to the gate (it was directly across from where I deplaned). I was put on stand-by. Within the five minutes I was standing there, the flight from St. Louis to Columbus went from a 30 to 45 minute delay, AND the flight from Phoenix to Columbus went backwards to a 4:35 p.m. departure. So, I got off stand-by and am now patiently (ha!) waiting for the 4:35 p.m. departure. Of course, I am still obsessively checking for changes. Unfortunately, there really isn’t anything I’ll be able to do if this flight doesn’t leave. All of the other flights to anywhere east have left already. Time to scrounge up some dinner and hope for the best.