We visited my family, who live on the other side of the country. It was wonderful. We had a great time. Our new niece is pretty awesome for a three-month-old. I ought to tell you guys about that some time, but I'm kinda bad at writing these things in a timely fashion.
So let me tell you about the trip back. Now, one of my biggest adult fears is missing a flight. I don't mind flying (much) but my favorite thing about driving to a place is that if you accidentally leave an hour late, you simply arrive an hour late. If you arrive an hour late for a flight...I'm not sure what happens, to be honest. I think they just thank you for giving them your money and wish you luck purchasing another ticket.
So we were flying back from Philadelphia. There was going to be a forty-minute layover, which isn't much. As long as people get out of the plane quickly and the connecting flight isn't on the other side of the airport, we'd have plenty of time. So we taxi out and the plane just sits there for forty minutes. They told us they'd try to make up the time.
I wanted to ask the flight staff about it, but I figure that they know we have places to go. I mean, that's the whole point of an airline. It's not like they'd go a little faster if I just asked nicely.
Our plans for the flight were simple: think about how nice it is to be home, try to sleep, pretend we don't exist, play video games. There was a family with a small child in front of us. The kid - who was told not to bother the people in front of them - spent the flight trying to get our attention and coughing at us, which disrupted all of those plans.
We arrived in Phoenix an hour and forty minutes after we were supposed to. I regretted not acting nicely. But they said they'd hold our connecting flights. I felt kinda sorry for everybody who was waiting for us.
Now, holding connecting flights is a two-step process. Telling us that they held the flights is step two. Step one - the really important step - is to actually hold the flights. They skipped step one. If you're morally bankrupt and you've got a bunch of people who are justifiable angry, and you need to get them off your plane quickly and quietly, that's how you do it.
They put us up at a hotel for the night. We got there at 1 AM and needed to be out the door at 6 AM to catch our new connecting flight. Remember how I mentioned my fear of missing flights? Yeah. Not a very restful night. I mean, if you miss your departing flight, worst thing that happens is you stay home. If you miss a connecting flight, are you just stuck in Phoenix? Would they tell us that we only get one do-over and we already used it? I have no idea, and I don't think I would've trusted any answer they gave me.
We got there on time. The plane, however, took an extra ninety minutes. This was longer than the flight itself. We began asking ourselves questions, like "How can US Airways be so bad at this? This is the one thing they do" and "What if we died and the afterlife is just an infinitely long travel delay?"
We arrived. Our luggage - which they had insisted we gate-check - didn't. We were told to fill out a form and maybe they'd be in touch with us eventually. Or we could wait and see if the next flight from Phoenix had it. We had questions - like why was the first flight late, why was the second flight late, how do we know we're not dead - but the answers didn't seem to really matter and we spent the rest of the morning sitting around baggage claim.
(Yes, the next flight had our luggage. We're home. Our airplane-ghost theory is still just a theory.)