Not according to plan

Well the trip has taken a definite memorable turn. You hear travel horror stories, but as many trips as I have taken, nothing really ever goes that bad. Once a friend of mine had a bag that didn't show up, but the next day it was at the airport. Today was my first taste of bad.

I checked out of the hotel, took the car back to Thrifty and made it to the airport by noon for my 1:45 flight. Check in was easy, security was a breeze and I found myself at the Harpoon tap room just down from my gate with plenty of time to spare. Even managed to get upgraded to first class, although I chuckled because the flight from Boston to New York is about 35 minutes. So far so good.

We board the plane and there is water waiting in the seat. The stewardess came around and gave a soda and snack. There was a guy on the plane who was ticked he wasn't in first class. He actually had a good seat - one row behind first class, but that was the first row with two seats, so he had no seat in front of him. Lots of leg room. Maybe he wanted the services? But again, it's a half hour flight. He talked to the flight attendant and she said there wasn't anyone in row 1 right now, so he could sit there. 15 minutes from when we were supposed to take off (but were still there), this old couple comes on the plane and takes the seats in row 1, bumping this guy back to his original seat. Now, granted - they shouldn't even be on that flight because it should have already been airborne. Anyway, he was pissed, argued with the flight attendant who was giving it right back. Sitting back in his seat we sit on at the gate for a while with the captain saying JFK has a lot of traffic and we have to wait until 2:15 instead of our original 1:45. Still okay - they add plenty of time to the flight estimation to allow for that. 2:30 we are still there and I start getting worried. The flight to Frankfurt takes off at 5:00 and boarding begins at 4:00. Still time. We taxi down the run way, drive around for a long time. It looks like we are set to go, but then a left turn away from the runway spelled trouble. The Captain came on and said we have to wait 90 minutes to take off and we didn't have enough fuel, so we were headed back to the gate. The new take off time would get us to JFK after out flight to Germany was to take off.

What made it worse is there is a third companion on the trip currently in New York that we were supposed to meet and fly together to Germany - so we had to get her bumped off her flight, book a flight for her from NY to Boston. Needless to say, after 1:33 minutes on the phone, that was worked out, the trip to Germany cancelled and flights back to Phoenix rebooked for Tuesday. Her flight was supposed to arrive at 6:30, but it didn't show up until 8:30.

What about our bags? They were checked and the airline was not pulling them off. They went on to JFK, and I presume didn't make it to Germany because flight tracker showed the JFK flight finally landed at 5:06 and the Germany flight took off at 5:12. Our third companion had a missing bag as well. The baggage folks confirmed her bag was located and would be on the 10:33 flight...so we waited and that flight finally showed up around midnight. Our bags were not on there.

So, no Germany, which was my entire point of the trip. No bag, so I have no clothes except what I am wearing. Four days in Boston with no itinerary and we only have this hotel for tonight. Who knows what the rest of the trip will bring? It isn't looking too promising at this point.