Thread: Nonrev purgatory

I had been planning a trip to SFO for a few weeks. I figured flights should be wide open towards the end of Jan. I would leave Sat but could leave Sun if things didn't work out. I kept an eye on flights and all flights were green. Even found a great car rental and hotel rate. Then a week out, a non-airline friend asks me if it's possible to change flights a few days earlier because of the blizzard coming. BLIZZARD??? (Just a month ago over Christmas, it was in the 70s). His date of travel, like mine, was scheduled for Sat 1/23. I frantically checked the weather and flight loads every day. Unfortunately, I could not leave earlier than Sat. The flights changed from green to yellow to red. The forecast called for 3-7 inches by Sat afternoon with snow starting in the AM. Then flights started cancelling but an email from AA stated that they would try and get the morning flights out. I looked at my alternates to the JFK-SFO nonstop - PHX, ORD, BOS, LAS, LAX. Anywhere west coast would do. Even with the cancellations later in the day, there was still hope. Late Friday, the forecast changed and the snow would start to fall before midnight. The initial forecast of 3-7 inches changed to 1-2 ft. All the AA flights once the forecast changed cancelled.

I started looking at OAL. Virgin America seemed wide open only to cancel a short time later. JetBlue had a Friday night flight delayed to 1:40 AM but did I really want to trek to the airport at that ungodly hour? Not with being #20+ on the standby list with only 2 seats open. What was this? DL had a 767 flight at 7 AM to LAX with 50 seats open and only 4 standbys. I set up cancellation alerts and checked before I headed to the airport at 4 AM. Now there were 80+ seats open. I get to the airport and about 2-4 inches of snow was already on the ground. The departure boards say the flight, along with a 6AM ATL and a handful of Caribbean flights are on time. I get to the gate and get a seat in EC. Board and door closes 5 min prior to departure. Sweet! After the safety demo, the FA hands out an amenity kit, menu and tells us that we get a free meal off the buy on board menu. FREE breakfast and a Margarita are sounding nice at this point. Pushback takes a long time as the tug/plane keeps getting stuck but I'm not worried. We deice then taxi to the runway where we wait. And wait. And wait. Two hours have passed since pushback. They are plowing the runway. The captain comes on the PA to say we have to return to the gate because too much time has elapsed and we need to deice again and give us an opportunity to deplane due to the DOT 3 hour rule. To add insult to injury, the winds are now gusting to 40 kts which means the deice equipment cannot safely operate if the winds are above 40. Then the dreaded words - flight is cancelled.

Not sure which is worse - Mig's Thanksgiving walk of shame x2 or thinking I'm really lucky to be on the last flight out in EC looking forward to the movies I picked out to watch, free cocktails and food, ahead of the snow, only to have to drive back home in it? So close yet so far. By the time the storm was over, JFK ended up with 30 inches of snow.

P.S. None of the DL flights, including the 6 AM ATL flight made it out that day but my friend changed his flight to Thursday and is still enjoying MIA beach.