Washington Insights: Travel Turmoil

My mother once told me (Daria here) never to say (or write) anything when I'm angry ... but today, sorry Mom, I'm going to ignore your advice just this once.

As I write, Ken and I are stranded in Atlanta, having missed our connection home to Florida because our flight to Atlanta from Albany, NY (we were there on a corporate speaking date) was late arriving in Atlanta.

For years, we've told you: "Don't make plane reservations with a stopover. Fly non-stop!"

We broke that rule, but only out of necessity because, regrettably, there are no non-stop flights to our part of Florida from Albany.

Our other hard and fast travel rule has always been, "If you must change planes, leave plenty of time between connections." We did, leaving an hour and a half of "flub time" between our two flights.

That should have been plenty, right? Well, it wasn't.

Although our flight left Albany almost an hour late, we still arrived over the Atlanta airport just about on time because most airlines so blatantly "pad" their "scheduled" flight time.

That's the good news.

With the clock ticking for our connection, we circled the airport several times because of heavy air traffic in the Atlanta area. Finally, we landed -- only to sit on the runway for 15 exasperating minutes.

When we finally reached the gate, we weren't allowed to deplane in the "international" jetway (why the heck were we parked there to begin with?) until the baggage checked plane-side had been loaded off and lined up on the tarmac.

Even after all that, if we had been in almost any other airport than Atlanta, we still could have hustled along for the connection to Florida and probably made it. However, we were parked at Concourse E with our connection leaving on Concourse A ... about 100 miles away!

So long, connection.

So ... now we're sitting at Concourse A, hoping that we can get a seat on the 8:55 p.m. plane because the 6:22 p.m. flight is over-booked, and, of course, our original 4:22 p.m. flight is long gone. It's probably the only flight that left on time that day!