My wife was out of town over the weekend visiting her sister and some old friends, so I decided I’d hit the road, too. In the mood for some poker, I flew to Philadelphia to play at Parx Casino, which I had visited twelve years ago as one of the stops on my drive home after dropping my daughter off to start college in New York (I wrote about it here). I was impressed with the action, the personnel, and the game choices. I made a few dollars, too.
Sadly, this trip didn’t go nearly as well — on many fronts.
First off, I stayed The Inn At Fox Chase, a Best Western hotel just a few minutes from Parx. Without going into detail, I’ll just say it was a sub-par experience — even the lobby waffle maker at breakfast didn’t work. Fortunately, there was a good diner a few miles away.
From there, I headed to Parx, which now has an even bigger poker room and variety of games. My first day playing went quite well and I walked out a happy winner. Unfortunately, I was card dead for the following three days and sat through hour after boring hour without raking in a decent pot. When all was said and done, I ended up a loser — but that wasn’t the end of my bad weekend.
I was scheduled to fly home Sunday on an 8pm Southwest flight, but severe thunderstorms came through, making driving to the airport a pain and giving me the feeling my return flight would be affected. Sure enough, right after I returned the rental car, I got a text from Southwest saying my departure had been pushed to 10pm.
With nothing better to do and having not eaten since breakfast, I settled on an airport pizza which turned out not to be as bad as I expected. With rain still pouring down at 9:30pm, when we were supposed to be boarding, I got another text saying we were delayed until midnight. No one at the gate made an announcement, but the simultaneous groans from my fellow passengers — and those waiting for a Nashville-bound flight scheduled for the same time — could probably be heard in the next concourse.
Finally, around 10:30pm, a Southwest gate agent explained the plane that was coming in to pick us up had run into major storms over Morgantown, West Virginia, and been diverted to Pittsburgh, where it was sitting on the ground waiting for skies to clear enough to eventually get to Philadelphia.
Anticipating it might end up being cancelled altogether, I checked the airport hotel to see if it had any rooms available, but it was all booked up. The nearest vacancy was in Center City, a cab ride away. Next, I tried to find a seat on a flight the next day on Southwest or any other airline. By that point on a Sunday night, the pickings were quite slim, with no nonstops available. and only a couple of flights the next evening that would be really expensive — $600 to $950 one way!
I was doubly disappointed because I had paid Southwest an extra $60 to get boarding number A-3, which virtually guaranteed I’d get the exit row aisle seat I prefer with extra legroom — if my original flight ever got off the ground. If I was pushed to Monday night or even Tuesday, I’d lose that option and likely have to take a middle seat with other C-group passengers.
I usually avoid problems like this by taking early morning flights. They’re less likely to be impacted by weather delays because the plane and the crew are already in the same city. This time, with my wife away, I thought I’d take advantage and play more poker, but as I said earlier, that didn’t work out well.
A little after 11pm, I stretched my legs and walked over to a customer service agent. I could tell he was tired of answering the same questions for the last two hours, so I apologized for making him say it again, but I wondered if the airline would provide a hotel voucher should the flight be cancelled. In a curt, compassion-free tone, he gruffly said, “We don’t do that for weather.” I thought he was done, but he looked down at his screen, then back up at me and added, “But your plane is on the way from Pittsburgh, so you’re going to get to St. Louis tonight.”
At this point, I was exhausted, but I started thinking about how, for me, this was an annoyance, not a disaster. After all, I had nowhere to be Monday morning. Both my iPhone & iPad held their charges, so I could browse online and even stream some things on Netflix while sitting at the gate. As I looked around, I spotted at least three families traveling with very young children, including one woman with a one- or two-month-old baby. All the adults and kids were past their bedtimes and well into cranky, exhausted mode.
Then I thought of the ground crew personnel who had been working in the rain through the afternoon and into the night, as well as the team at the gate and the customer service counter who were putting in overtime to handle all of us. And I really felt bad for the new group of flight attendants waiting in the crew lounge who would be working my flight — and not just because they’d be starting so late.
I didn’t learn until a couple of years ago that the cabin crew doesn’t get paid until everyone’s on board, the flight’s about to leave the gate, and we hear, “The aircraft doors are now closed.” That’s when their payday begins — and lasts until the plane lands. If they’re working two or three flight segments that day (or night), they don’t earn a penny until they take off again.
So, even though I didn’t get home until 2:30am (four and a half hours late) after a completely wasted weekend, it could have been worse. Then on Monday, my attitude improved a bit more when I got an email from Southwest apologizing for the disruption and offering a $100 voucher I can use on a future flight.
When I use that voucher, you can be sure it will be for an early-morning departure.