deserted in detroit

The flight attendant life is one filled with delays and reroutes, unexpected rough air and cancellations. Typically we run into these issues during work but there are the highly unfortunate times that they affect your personal travels. Hence the blog title.

A few weeks ago I had base orientation in NY. Don't worry, I won't bore you with the lifeless details of that afternoon. My story begins afterward. I decided since we finished orientation fairly early that I would catch a flight out of LaGuardia into Detroit with a connection into Birmingham. The seats looked good and I was confident that I would make it home by 9:30pm. I went to sign into my 5:30pm flight out of LaGuardia and was redirected to the 4:30pm flight. {Perfect! I might get home even sooner!} I boarded with the passengers, we taxied out, and sat. For an hour. {No big deal}, I'm thinking, {I was planning to take the 5:30pm flight anyways, so this won't make much of a difference.} We got in the air and I quickly noticed the weather was not the greatest terrible and we weren't really going anywhere. Shortly after, the captain came over the PA. "Uhh...ladies and gentlemen. If you've flown much, you uh, may have noticed that we've been circling over Cincinnati for a little while now. The uh, ATC has put us into a holding pattern for about uh, 40 minutes or so. Sorry for the delay and we'll get you on the ground as soon as possible." {Great. Now I really don't know if I'll make my connection.} We finally land in Detroit and I run down the jetway begging the gate agent to hold the Birmingham flight. She agreed to call them and I booked it towards terminal C. Mind you, I was at the end of terminal A. For those of you who have flown through Detroit you know that's a nightmare. After running for God only knows how long, I arrived at the gate and saw that the boarding door had been closed. {Guess I'm not making that flight}. I approached the nearest gate agent only to find out that there's nothing back to New York, nothing to Atlanta, and nothing into Birmingham or anywhere in Alabama for that matter. Basically, I was stranded. So, I found my way to the flight attendant lounge (which was a whole other adventure) and took a seat. {I surrender.} I was left with two options. I could A) get a hotel for 7 hours until my early morning flight into Birmingham or B) find a corner to sleep in the airport. I chose option B.

The above photos display a perplexed and helpless flight attendant along with her cozy corner of the crew lounge. 

The next morning I made it on the 8:00am flight into Birmingham and welcomed the south and it's beautiful, sunny weather with open arms.

It just goes to show that the flight attendant life isn't always as glamorous as it's made out to be.