Casey's flight to Chicago

I just finished a 2 day trip with a long, 19 hour Las Vegas layover, followed by a very long day today. I'll post about that when I am not so exhausted. In the meantime, my daughter Casey will be my "guest blogger" via an e-mail she sent me.

She flew on Southwest (yes, on a real, paid ticket! Something airline kids aren't really used to!) She is in Illinois to visit her boyfriend's family. You may also recall that she recently turned 21...

Hey Mom!

I just wanted to let you know about the crew working on our flight to Midway. Very nice people! While she was collecting trash, I handed Kathy* two gossip magazines and told her thank you for working during the holiday. We chit-chatted about nasty weather, crabby people, etc. John greeted me as I came on the plane, I told him thanks for working on the day after Christmas. He told me later that he volunteered to work, which was rather nice. Kris was a sweet heart, we exchanged stories of "That's not water on the bathroom floor" and laughed our butts off. Kathy was very generous, she offered me a coffee with baileys-and brought me two minis. I definitely pocketed the second single.. hey! I think its better on the rocks!

Let me tell you about our day! Good grief! Matt and I arrived at the airport at 6:05 am for a 7:30 flight (which is plenty of time for our little airport) but the Southwest line was snaked around the terminal all the way past United and down to Northwest. Luckily people knew what they were doing and we had our bags checked by 6:40.. hey it's winter time... my clothes aren't as thin as summer clothes or else I would have had two carry ons. We get to our concourse, grab a bagel and wait a few mins. The overhead announcement came on and there is freezing rain in chi-town we'll get going asap. In fact, MIDWAY was closed.. people couldnt get to work because of the frozen roads. TWO HOURS LATER we finally board. and already Matt is crabby and I'm like whatever... please. Fly standby from Paris and miss 6 flights and get stuck in Boston then you have permission to be crabby!

So, we get flying, yay! We pass Columbus, Ohio, and not too long later the Captain comes on. There is a broken plane on the runway at Midway, it apparently skidded on the runway, and into a snow bank (??) So, we turn around and diverted to Columbus, and land. We arrive at a gate and we're told to deplane so the gate can be cleared for another plane. Well, as we start to deplane, there is a change of plans and "everybody get back in your seats we're heading to Midway." We finally arrived in Chicago at 1pm. I wished farewell to the crew and prayed that they don't come across nasty customers!! As we walk through the terminal, I hear the announcment for the 9:15 flight to vegas to make way to the gate. FOUR hours late! holy crap!!!! I'm glad I was the delay instead of waiting because of a delay!!!

Anyway, I wanted to let you know how our day was--and tell you how awesome the flight crew was! I'll call you later! Love you, Merry Christmas and thank you, Mom for free Baileys!!!!!


*names changed

So, a big thank you to the Southwest crew for being so sweet to my daughter!