All considered, I slept pretty well. Both on the same Phoenix Flight, Mr. Sacramento and I talked as we waited for our 6:45 flight. 5:45. 6:00. 6:15. 6:30. 6:45. 7:00. 7:15.

"We're having some mechanical issues. We will be boarding the plane soon."

We boarded at 7:30, but I wasn't too worried cause I had a 90-minute layover in Phoenix. Maintenance trouble, they said. When we touched ground in Phoenix after a loud and turbulent flight, one lady yelled "If this is what it was like after maintenance, I'd hate to know what it was like before maintenance.

As we waited, three thoughts occurred to me:
1. I wonder if this plane came from Fresno?
2. This plane has ashtrays. Didn't they stop putting ashtrays in 737's a long time?
3. Why are we just sitting here?

9:15. 9:30. 9:45.

I raced across the airport.

I didn't make it.

The next flight was three hours away (boarding at 12:30). I bided my time in the bar, weighting the pros and cons of buying a new shirt so that I wouldn't feel so grubby. Con won.

12:15. 12:30. 12:45

My flight disappeared from the gate. It moved to a gate across the airport. I scrambled to make it and did.

At take-off time, I was informed that the plane that we were supposed to fly on was declared unsafe for flight. They were going to put us in a new plane.

As we waited, three thoughts occurred to me:
1. Thank goodness I don't have to make a connecting flight in Houston.
2. I'll bet the unsafe plane has ashtrays, too.
3. If they declared my scary LAS-PHX plane to be fixed, and it was previously in bad enough shape that it needed to be fixed, and the grounded plane was declared even unsafer than that... I need a drink.

Though an hour late into the cockpit and another half-hour wait on a runway, the Phoenix-Houston flight was without incident. Except, to my complete and utter unsurprise, that it didn't have my luggage on it.

When Dad and I met at the airport, I commented that I could barely keep track of what flights I was on and that, given what America West had put me through already, there was almost no chance that they were able to keep track. So when they cleared the baggage carousel without my bags on it, I could barely muster up any care.

What could I do? Threaten to never fly with them again?

They assured my father and I that it would take 6-8 hours to get my luggage to me. That turned out to be every bit as reliable as everything else they had to say said. When it did arive, a day and some hours later, I was just glad my camera was still in there. I was actually more surprised about that than I was that they had lost it in the first place.
America West Airlines
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Epilogue]