On Wednesday of this week I got done with my presentation and coaching with my customer earlier than I had expected.  Great, I thought to myself!  I can make the earlier flight home.  I jumped in a cab in downtown Philadelphia and raced to the Philly airport.  Got there in time to stand by for the 4:30 pm back to Atlanta, but it was full, so I didn’t make it.

No worries, I had my seat on the 6:30 pm flight.  Soon a time of 7:00 pm was posted.  Storm clouds came in, it got dark outside.  They said something about a “ground hold” for flights.  And so for the next few hours, I began to get calls on my cell and emails from Delta telling me that now my flight was 8:00 pm…….no, make that 9 pm……………nope, here was another call, with a lovely recorded voice telling me that “Hi, this is Delta Airlines calling again”…yes, the recording actually said “again”……telling me that is was now going to leave at 10 pm……then later, they told me 11 pm.

At 8:30 pm, I pulled the plug, moved my flight to the next morning, and called the Marriott downtown, the hotel I had just left, and got another room….jumped back into a cab to head downtown to spend another night.

Next morning, up early to head back to the airport for an 8:30 am.   Which was now posted as leaving at 9:30 am.  I met a guy who spent the night in the airport, he said the Atlanta flight I was on did leave…….at 1 am!  We boarded our 8:30 at 10:15 and wheels were up at 11:30 am, landing in Atlanta at 1:00 pm.

Something about that Philly airport and summertime thunderstorms and rain and wind and lightning.  I have seen this before.  As one of my old co-workers used to say….if someone even spits on the tarmac in Philly, they shut down the airport!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 8:55 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.