Adventures at DTW

Yesterday, I took a flight from DTW (Detroit Airport) to PHL (Philadelphia Airport). It was scheduled to leave Detroit at 10:18am and arrive in Philly at 12:06pm. Here's how my day went:

8:30am - Left my apartment. Checked the flight status online and it says it's on time. Things are looking good. Only got 5 hours of sleep, but still feeling excited to go back home.

9:05am - While on the way to DTW, I get a call from my mom. She says that my flight got delayed two hours. This was kind of a setback, but two hours isn't that bad.

9:45am - After arriving at DTW and going through security, I go to Burger King to eat breakfast. I ordered a sausage, egg, and cheese Croissan'Wich, possibly the best breakfast ever known to man. The steak, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich from McDonald's is up there too.

10:15am - After eating my delicious breakfast, I go to check the monitor to see my flight status. Next to my flight reads the word: CANCELED. Oh, joy.

10:25am - I go to the Delta Customer Service area. There is no one at the desk, but they do have this scanner thing that prints out new boarding passes. I scan my boarding pass, and out comes two pieces of paper. The first, a $6.00 food voucher. The second, a boarding pass for a flight at 12:30pm. Not bad.

10:30am - While walking to my new gate (going through the tunnel pictured above) I take a second look at the boarding pass. The seat says: STANDBY. Great. The flight I have a guaranteed seat for is at 5:30pm. Great.

12:00pm - After waiting at my new gate, watching a sermon and falling asleep while doing so, I get hungry and walk over to the nearby Fuddruckers. I love burgers from Fuddruckers and excitedly use my meal voucher to get a burger. Much to my dismay, burgers from airport Fuddruckers are of much lower quality than standard Fuddruckers burgers. By the way, the 12:30pm flight got delayed an hour.

12:30pm - I go up to the lady at the desk and ask her what my standby position is (with any empty seats on the flight, they let as many people on as they can depending on what order you are on the list). Unfortunately, I am 21st on the list and the likelihood of me getting a seat on the plane is very small. I discuss my options with the lady and the best alternative we come up with is taking a 2:15pm flight to New York (LaGuardia). She tells me to go to the new gate where they will print my new boarding pass, so I travel through the tunnel again.

12:40pm - I arrive at my new gate and talk to the man at the desk. I explain to him my situation and ask him to print out my boarding pass. Unfortunately, he tells me that I was not placed on the flight. I try to explain more about what is going on, and he eventually finds a flight to Philadelphia that I could take at 1:55pm. This would save me 20 minutes so I agree to take it and travel back through the tunnel yet again to go to my new gate.

1:30pm - After waiting at my new gate for a while, the lady at the gate informs us all that the flight has been delayed 30 minutes. I'm starting to get sick of these delays, but 30 minutes isn't much compared to all the delays I already went through.

2:30pm - I finally board the plane and get to my seat. I'm ready to finally leave and go home.

2:45pm - After sitting in the plane for 15 minutes playing Angry Birds, I hear the flight attendant lady give an announcement that we are apparently too heavy to take off. She asks for volunteers to get off the plane and offers some Delta credit in return. I think about volunteering but other people in the front of the plane volunteer so I just sit back waiting for the plane to leave.

3:00pm - We finally take off. PTL

4:00pm - After going to sleep for a little bit, I wake up as our plane is going through some turbulence. And then.. the turbulence keeps continuing. This is by far the most turbulence I've ever experience on a plane. It was so much that they weren't able to serve drinks the whole flight. I do suffer from mild motion sickness, so I start feeling a little nauseous as the turbulence doesn't stop. I think about reaching for the vomit bag, but I'm a tough guy and can push through for an hour.

5:00pm - We finally land in Philadelphia. My stomach was still feeling uneasy but at least I didn't throw up. We actually have to walk down these stairs outside and then walk up stairs to get inside to the airport. For some reason the plane couldn't connect with the gate thing? Kinda weird...

5:10pm - I go to the pickup area, but my parents say they're going to be late since they hit some traffic.

5:30pm - My parents come and we go out to eat some pho and cheesesteaks in Philly. We then go to the Korean grocery store before going home. Arrival time - 8:00pm.

Lessons learned from this experience:

• patience - I really need more of this. I think I'm a pretty patient guy, but this day showed how impatient I can really get.
• proactive - I need to be more proactive. I waited a while before I actually found out my position on the standby list and tried to get on a new flight. I might have been able to save some time if I was more proactive.
• plans - I need to surrender my plans to God. I planned on getting home by a certain time so that I could do things at home. But maybe God wanted me to spend 5-6 hours at the airport. I need to let go of my plans.
• productivity - I need to make the most of all the time I have. Even if I'm stuck at an airport, there's a lot I can do instead of just playing Angry Birds and falling asleep.