Chapter Twelve: Bermuda

So let me recount all I can remember from yesterday. My Mom, two brothers, Dad and Grandmother get to the PHL airport three hours before our flight at 7:00 AM, thinking there's going to be lots of people because of the Thanksgiving travel, but there was no one, and we end up sitting at our gate extremely early, the first ones there for the flight. We had our tickets, and we had known they were going to bump a few people from our flight. So we were the first one's to go up to the attendant when she came to check people in, and she had said there was nothing she could do at this point. We kept bugging her and bugging her, asking if we could get our seat assignments, to make sure we got on the flight. She kept telling us she couldn’t tell us information. Finally, about twenty minutes before we were supposed to get on the flight, as other people are lining up to get on, another man goes up and talks to her because he thinks he’s going to get bumped. She tells HIM that us and his group are the ones getting bumped. She knew the whole time we were getting bumped, yet she couldn’t even have the decency to tell us. And the fact that we didn’t have seat assignments on our boarding passes proved that they knew, straight from the very beginning, that we were getting bumped. So then, chaos erupts, as the two other guys and my Dad and Grandmother start flipping out. An amazing couple tries to volunteer up their seats if we could all get on as a family, but it didn’t work out. So theeeen, the manager from US Airways comes to tell the two guys who got bumped that if they get on the flight we couldn’t go, but if they didn’t get on the flight all six of us would go (not sure how that worked, but apparently it did). So US Air is sitting there making this poor man choose between his vacation and my family’s vacation. But the man didn’t understand (he was yelling and screaming), so they tell us to get our bags and get on. So, all six of us walk down the ramp and are about to get on the plane, when someone comes out and says there are only FOUR seats. Oh man. So, my Dad and I volunteered to wait behind, since they said there was a flight we could take later. So we go back out and stand around as they try to get us on another flight, and they gave us a hefty compensation (that still doesn’t account for the extreme inconvenience of ruining our vacation). They tell us there is a 1:55 flight to JFK, and then a 5:40 flight from JFK to Bermuda. They send us on our way, and we head down to Delta to find our gate and wait for a few hours. On the way down, we read the board, and realize the flight to JFK is three hours late. Aka, we would miss the flight to Bermuda. Sooo we freak out, and run to Delta, telling them to put us on another flight. They put us on the 3:50 flight to JFK. Problem is, that gives us forty minutes in JFK to get to our flight to Bermuda. They all claimed that was plenty of time to catch our plane, but anyone who has been to JFK and has to transfer to another terminal (leaving security, catching the AirTrain, and going back through security), especially the day before Thanksgiving, it just wouldn’t work in forty minutes. So we decided to forgo that flight, and drive up the NYC ourselves. Coming out of Philly was easy, until we hit a sixteen mile traffic jam on the Jersey Turnpike. We turn around (on the highway), and took backroads to get past the jam. We finally got back on track, and we hit a HUGE stopped traffic jam just going into NYC. It’s three hours before our flight, and we still have 45 minutes to drive. We sit, and sit, and sit, moving about 5 miles every half hour. We pull up to JFK exactly 35 minutes before our flight. My Dad drops me off and I book it in, fly through security, and make it to the gate four minutes before the gate closes. I call my Dad and he’s STILL on the train in from long-term parking. I beg and plead with the attendant there to leave the door open just five minutes longer, but no avail. The guy waiting on standby gets to go to Bermuda instead of us. She gives me two boarding passes for the same flight the next night. I take them, wondering if it’s even worth it at this point. I get back and find my Dad, and we are SO frustrated at this point. It seems we’re just not supposed to go to Bermuda. We sit around, trying to get on Wifi to contact my Mom, but of course JFK charges $10 just to get on the internet. We look at hotels in the area: all booked except one. We decided to just drive home. At this point it wasn’t worth it. It takes us a good four hours to get home (which would normally take two). We got home and passed out in bed, exhausted. It had been sixteen hours of trying to get on a flight, it has been awful and crazy! Now the question is, do we go to Bermuda tonight, and risk getting bumped again, and miss Thanksgiving...or do we just stay at home?