Delayed Flying Home from Phoenix

[canyonwalker]

My two days of sales training in Phoenix finished up two hours early today. "Great, now I don't have to hot-foot it to the airport during rush hour to catch my 6:50pm flight," I said. While many of colleagues took advantage of the unscheduled time to stay behind at the hotel and enjoy a round or two at the bar before leaving for the airport, I just called a car right away— well, "right away" after chatting with colleagues outside the meeting rooms for about 20 minutes. I figured if I were going to relax and have a beer somewhere, I'd do at the airport. Two colleagues who agreed with me shared my ride.

🎵 Rolling, Rolling, Rolling on the Delays 🎵

When I left the hotel about 3:30pm I already knew my flight was delayed. At 1:30pm already Southwest was showing that the flight would be delayed.



At first it was just a few minutes. It's going to get worse, I told myself. It's a rolling delay. First they notify that it's a few minutes late, then it's 10 minutes late, then 15... until eventually it could be an hour or more. Why don't they just admit up front how far behind they're running instead of acting like maybe, just maybe, today only, the hand of god will come down and turn back the clocks so that Southwest gets its operations back on schedule.

Thankfully today's rolling delays didn't roll out to an hour or more. The roll stopped at 36 minutes. The net of it was I got home— as in, walking through my front door— at 9:45pm.