Ordeal
I mentioned before that I was writing while sitting on a plane in Phoenix. One might ask: What was I doing sitting in Phoenix? Thereby hangs a tale.
I got to the airport in San Diego at about 6:00 a.m. to wait for my 8:30 flight. After two boring hours of waiting I was on the plane, and shortly after that we flew for a bit more than 50 minutes to Phoenix, to drop off most of the passengers and pick up a few others. We arrived, those headed for Phoenix disembarked, and we waited. And waited for a while more. Then the stewardess came on the address system and informed us that due to bad weather in to the east our flight might be delayed. So we waited some more. There were only twelve passengers, counting myself, left on the plane, so we moved up to better seats got comfortable, and hoped for news. Unfortunately, after about 45 minutes the Captain came on and announced that the weather was so bad that the leg of the flight we were all counting on was cancelled—the plane was going to Chicago and we had better get off of it if that wasn't where we were going.
We all got off after dejectedly headed over to join the mob around the Southwest Airlines desk to request being placed on another flight. It was around this time that we learned some interesting things. Southwest has a status for flights called 'weather advised'. If a flight is so designated and passengers are so warned Southwest absolves itself of any guarantee that the passengers will arrive at their destination on time and will not provide hotel accommodations if anything goes wrong and they must wait overnight. While we were back in San Diego the Southwest staff repeatedly warned us the that flight to and beyond some city (Baltimore, if I remember correctly) were likely to be delayed by the weather. Our destination did not fall into this category so we ignored it. The Southwest staff, however, apparently noted that they had warned us. So when we got to Phoenix the computers all said that we'd been warned, and so Southwest had no obligation besides to put us on another later flight. The staff at Phoenix were also convinced that every one of the three flights scheduled later that day would also end up being cancelled1, so instead most of us book places on the flight at 7:10 the next morning.
My particular problem was that I had arrived in the airport with $28 and some change, not having expected to ever set foot in the airport. Thus, I had no hope of affording a hotel. I ended up spending the entire time with a very nice grandmotherly lady (a grandmother in fact) form Illinois. We talked, bought meals from the 24 hour bakery, retrieved her checked suitcase, found locations to recharge her cell phone, bought books to read from the Borders, and just plain spent a lot of time waiting. It was a rather uncomfortable night, and I had not actually slept for more than 26 hours2 when we boarded the plane just before 7 in the morning. Needless to say; I slept for the entire flight.
In the end I was just very glad to get home. It seems this is something that has happened to most people at one time or another when traveling by air, so now i can say I've spent a night in an airport too. I just hope I don't have to do it again anytime soon. Or ever.