Why You Shouldn't Fly on April Fools Day

We had planned to stay in Oklahoma until after our youngest son's birthday, and then we were heading to the airport the next day. But what we didn't fully consider was that "the next day" was April 1. Note to self: Think twice before flying on April Fools Day.

We were at the airport early in Oklahoma City, where we noticed that the airline web site was down. Hmmm, that's interesting. 

We experienced a little delay getting our first flight loaded, but after a little waiting we were in the air for the first leg of our journey. When we landed in Dallas, we found out that the "interesting" web site problems were industry-wide. A program called Aerodata, is used to plan weight and balance for flights. Its technical glitch spread throughout the country delaying 3,400 flights. April Fools! 

That glitch was probably the reason our carrier canceled a morning flight, that was now impacting all the flights for the rest of the day. We hung out at Gate B21 as grumbling passengers were bumped from flight to flight because of the earlier cancellation. To make it worse, the next flight was delayed for maintenance. April Fools, it seems the oxygen system on the plane needed some work.

We had plenty of time to eat lunch as we waited for another flight. We assumed the fortune in our cookie from the Asian dinner was a good omen to cancel out our April Fools curse. We're just hoping that the recognition we deserve is a seat on a flight home.

By 2:00 we had sat through two different gate waiting areas in Dallas, and it looks like Mark has the same pose as he did way back in Oklahoma City early this morning. But Mark is still in a good mood, since we are heading back to our home on this April Fools Day.

We made the quarter-mile hike to Gate 3, hoping that we could get on the next available flight to the Rio Grande Valley. Our best entertainment of the day came as we found out we wouldn't get on this flight either. As stand-by flyers, we watched as all the ticketed passengers were called by groups to load the plane. Eventually everyone but a few other stand-bys had left the waiting area. It was another ten minutes as they were calling for a customer that hadn't shown up. They called her name multiple times, they called her cell phone, they even checked on the plane to make sure. So they added one more stand-by customer (not us), and then closed the flight door. Right after this long process was completed, a woman sitting near us jumped up from her seat and demanded to board the plane. She was the missing customer! It seems that she had been talking on the phone, and was somehow oblivious that she was missing her flight. This was the passenger that they had made every effort to contact earlier!

There was a considerable amount of yelling that included phrases like, "I can't believe you won't let me on that plane! I was sitting right there!" and our favorite, "Do you know who I am? I am a producer for CNN. You have to let me on that flight!" We thought the team at the gate handled the situation well, explaining all the ways they had tried to get her to board the plane. Her yelling drew quite a crowd, and we had front row seats to the fiasco.

The crew at Gate 3 booked her a seat on the next available flight--the one we were also heading to. We just hoped her last minute change didn't bump us off a third flight today! Sure enough, after another quarter-mile hike to Gate B14, she showed up there too. She was still talking on the phone and making good use of her extra hour in the Dallas airport.

When she moved close to Denisa, we started a conversation. She recognized us as the people with front row seats to her last missed flight. When she tried to blame the airline, Denisa was quick to explain we saw it all, and kindly repeated the effort we saw them go through to get her on that plane. With two minutes to board, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. What!?! When the producer finally returned, Denisa confessed that she was planning to come get her out of the bathroom if it looked like she could miss another flight. We are now friends again!

When it looked like we might not make it on a flight until midnight, we started making late night arrival plans. We tried calling our campground to get the code for the gate, but no one answered our repeated phone calls. Is the April Fool's curse still plaguing our travel day?

We didn't need those late-night plans, as we did actually make it on the next flight! We left Denisa's sister's house around 6 a.m. that morning, and we got back to the motor home around 6 p.m. in the evening. You can make that drive in a similar amount of time. But we didn't have a car to drive, since we had driven Denisa's mother and her car to Oklahoma for her. So we appreciated the stand-by flights that got us home eventually, in spite of April 1st trying to fool us.