Lesson Learned

Never leave your gate when your plane has been delayed.

This is a valuable lesson to know. We should have known Saturday would be a bad day when after we left the house Eric realized he left his coat and wallet at home. Luckily we were only 10 min from the house.

We got to the airport in plenty of time...checked in, got through security, got to the gate and boarded the plane. The plane was full and we were ready to go when the pilot came over the speaker saying Minnesota is experiencing a blizzard with high winds and we have been advised we can not land. He then told us it would be about an hour delay and for all of us to deboard the plane. So all of us passengers got off the plane.(BTW....since it was 70 degrees in Atlanta the airport was boiling hot with all the people in it and I am sure they still had the heat on). Eric and I ran to grab some food, went back to our gate and it was so packed full of people we could not move. We decided to go down to the next gate.

Unfortunately we lost track of time...got up and went to our gate and they had already boarded the plane. The "nice lady" at the desk said they tried paging us (but due to the large number of people in the airport we never heard them!!) and that they had already given our seats to someone else who was on time. She did say they had only one seat left so Eric and I decided that I would get on the plane and he would take a later flight. I drag my stuff on the plane and the seat they assigned to me was full. SO, once again I get off the plane and I also get bumped to a latter flight.

Our original flight was supposed to leave at 1:30, delayed until 3, missed the boarding, and now we were scheduled to leave Atlanta at 5:28.

Of course this time we stayed close to our gate, we were informed that we needed to move from gate C16 to gate C6...so we did and waited some more. Around 4:30 they told us we would be boarding any min...30 min later we are told the flight will be delayed due to the weather in Minnesota. Now we really wished we would have made our first flight! 10 Min later they tell us we can board (3rd times a charm right??) and the plane miraculously takes off and lands in Minnesota. Our first flight was supposed to land at 3pm but we didn't make it to Minnesota until 7:30pm.

Lesson learned....never leave your gate!