Tags: Airline Airplanes Colorado Denver gate agents home red eye flight security upset passenger

So as you know I was trying to catch the Red-eye home from Denver.  There were two flights leaving one at 11:45pm and one at 12:45.  Well the 11:45 was full with no seats on it headed to Philly.  I didn’t sign up for this one because there weren’t any seats on it and there were already several non-rev’s on the flight.  Also, there was an 8am flight headed home that was mostly empty that connected with the 12:45 flight.  I should have been home by 10 at the latest.  I was excited to get home and get some sleep since I had been up since 6:45 Saturday morning.  Well I got to the airport at 11pm and by the time I got through security the plane was delayed until 2am.  Ok an hour extra waiting no big deal.  So both planes were leaving out of the same gate.  First the Philly fight started boarding, and I waited.  Then the gate agents say that they were missing 20 people.  They maked announcements and a few showed up but not many.  Then they were missing 16 people.  These people had checked in downstairs but they were not here.  The gate agents boarded everyone that was there.  At this time I realized that if the plane goes without those 16 people (there were only 16 seats open on the 12:45 plane) I would probably not make the next plane.  I got up and spoke to the gate agent and asked if they could change my ticket.  She said no we are closing the doors.  Well the doom begins.  Ok, I’m stuck maybe those people won’t come.  But sure enough they came, and they were very upset that they did not make their flight.  They had been stuck in security and were not happy that they didn’t hold the plane.  Now mind you they were not that late, maybe about 15 or 20 minutes.  So I’m watching the list and watching the empty seats disappearing on the flight.  Man I’m thinking I’m not getting out of here tonight.  Hopefully people will miss this flight also and then I can go.  I was about number 10 on the non-rev list.  So they start boarding the flight and then they start calling the non-revs.  Ok there are a few empty seats.  They call about 8 non revs and then the plane is full.  Done, not making it.  Damn.  Stuck in Denver till 6:45am which is when the next flight is going out.  Now I had to wait over four hours in this airport.

Here is what the airport looked like at around 3am.  Very empty.  So around 6:15am they start boarding the 6:45 flight.  There were actually 4 of the original non-revs on the flight.  We were all waiting to be called.  I had checked with the gate agent because I knew there were several seats open in first class and I wanted to upgrade to one of them if possible.  That way I would have more room to sleep since it had been about 24 hours since I had slept.  I did get my first class seat and was seated next to an interesting man and we talked for about two hours of the slightly over three-hour flight but I will get back to that later.

Needless to say we landed in Charlotte and I now had to see if I could make my way home.  It wasn’t looking promising as all the flights home were full.  Ok that’s it for now I will update on the adventure from Charlotte home in the next blog.