Lots Of Yelling..

After being in florida for 9 days and watching my grandfather die and then having a funeral, I was (and am) beyond ready to get back home in new york city. I got to the airport 2 hours early with my sister and her boyfriend who were also flying Spirit Airlines (worst airline ever!) back to chicago. After waiting for a little bit in the terminal together we found out that both of our flights were delayed, along with about 4 or 5 other Spirit flights. My 8:05 pm departure time turned into 9:15 pm. Their 8:20 pm departure time turned into 9:15 pm as well. When the time to board comes around they start boarding and my flight is still waiting for a plane to arrive, so we get pushed back to 9:30 pm. 9:30 pm quickly became 9:50. Finally, a plane arrived, passengers deplaned and there was a quick clean-up and boarding. All is good right, SOOO NOT RIGHT!! After most of the passengers are seated the captain gets on the speaker and tells us that there is a mechanical problem and it should be no more then 10 minutes for them to look at and get paperwork done for it, fine, after this long what's 10 minutes. Well, a little bit after that the captain gets back on the speaker and tells us that our flight can no longer land at LaGuardia airport and we are now going to be landing at JFK, didn't make a difference, but oh my gosh the YELLLING that followed that was insane. So many people were yelling. The captain said to call whomever we needed to call and let them know and then we were on our way. A few minutes,and a LOT of crazy yelling, later the captain gets back and asks the yelling passengers to calm down so we can take off, also letting us know that if we do not take off in the next 14 minutes we will have exceeded some FAA regulations and would not be able to take off at all...
So this 14 minutes comes and goes and in the interim of it you hear the wheels of the plane attempting to turn, already I am thinking I would rather get off the plane because I just don't think it's going to make it. (This is not pessimism, but just the nature of my flight experiences!) So the captain gets on and tells the flight attendants to disarm the doors. Ironically, they look shocked that this is what's hapening. Then the captain gets back on the intercom and says that because people couldn't calm down and get in their seats that we surpassed this 14-minute-time limit and would not be able to take off. Imagine what happened next.....that's right YELLING...Now, I am not a fan of spirit airlines, BUT i will also say that the same people that were yelling, are the SAME people that wouldn't shut the hell up and it made it harder for us to go anywhere. In the process of all this, people have their cell phones out taking videos and are screaming, CALL CNN, I'm calling my congressman. Honestly, why can't people just accept that somethings in life are unavoidable. Sometimes, you just have to say you know what, I know this sucks, not just for me, but for EVERYONE involved, and I am going to suck it up and handle it like the grown up that I am.
Nope, that is not a common mentality. Maybe people need to hang out more with my friend mary jane and then it would be but whatever!

Anyway, we finally all deplane and they tell us to go to the ticket counters where they said they had rallied all the ticket agents. We get there, and for a good 15-20 minutes, there is not a single ticket agent or airline representative to be found.
I decide to call my fam, have them come pick me up, book a flight on another airline for the next morning and call it a night. I started to get my refund on the phone and then found out that I could go this line, which i thought was going to be easier. Ohhh was i wrong...Not only was it slow, BUT this man was determined to make it difficult for everyone. He was there with his fam, but needed to ask a question, he went to ask a question and then the airline representative went to find out the answer, however he was in the way of the other passengers getting their refunds so the ticket agent asked him to move, to which he responded with yelling. So security comes out and they are trying to calm him down, then this women in line starts yelling at the security people to stop yelling at him, so now they are asking her to please calm down. She is all riled up, he is all riled up and then this other woman decides to start yelling at the security guards for trying to calm down this woman who is screaming at them about screaming at this other man.

Needless to say, this was not a happy end to an already terrible week. But hey, at least it provided me something to blog about right? Oh and it was also the tipping point in convincing my parents that a private jet IS the way to go!!

PS. if you google spirit airlines flight 710 you will get some good articles about it.