Wasted Day of Travel

It shouldn't take 14 hours to fly from Eugene, OR to Phoenix, AZ, but it did.

We arrived at the Eugene airport in plenty of time (4:30 AM) for our 6:05 AM flight to Salt Lake City. We boarded the plane right on time, backed out from the gate and sat for about 5 minutes before the Captain came on the intercom and said there was a problem with one of the engines and he had to go back to the gate and have it checked. Everybody got off the plane and sat inside the terminal. The first announcement was that there was no mechanic around at this hour on Saturday morning and they were going to get one out of bed to come in and also have another sent down from Portland to assist. Meal vouchers were handed out to all the passengers. Big deal - they gave us all a $12 voucher and there wasn't any place to use it except for a small snack shop where you couldn't get anything except coffee and sweet rolls. At around 9:30 AM, the announcement was made that the flight crew had timed out and had to leave. Now, we have a plane with no crew to fly it. The agents at the gate did everything they could to help the passengers by making changes to all connecting flights in Salt Lake City, but each change they made had to be redone as more flights were missed as a result of the continuing delay in Eugene.

We sat through several more announcements until we all got so frustrated we started to visit the other airline ticket counters to try and make other arrangements on our own. We went to the US Airways counter and got tickets for a flight to Portland that, with a plane change to a direct flight, would get us to Phoenix by 7:30 PM with a one hour time change to Mountain time.

The flight from Eugene to Portland was a puddle jumping prop plane that only had six passengers and was a roller coaster ride in the strong winds outside. But it was a flight to an airport that had more options and we arrived at 12:30 PM. We  sat around the Portland airport until our flight left at 3:45 PM. We had some anxious moments there as the gate agent told us the flight may be delayed as a result of maintenance issues with the plane. Not again, please.

We were relieved when the plane finally lifted off and we were on our way. By the time we landed, got our luggage - another miracle that they arrived with us in Phoenix - took the shuttle to the parking lot, picked up the car and drove home, it was nearly 9 PM. We jokingly said that we probably could have driven from Eugene to home and gotten here at about the same time. The total time from when we got up in the morning (2 AM) until we arrived at home was about 19 hours.

The result of the long day was that it wasted valuable time for us to get things organized to be ready for picking up the truck on Monday AM. We will have to work fast to finish up on our shredding and packing to be ready.

Tonight we will get a chance, hopefully, to see Brian and Amy and the kids along with George and Cheryl one more time before we head west. It's a shame we don't have more time to spend here to be able to enjoy a more flexible schedule but it will be nice if we can catch everybody at the same time tonight. We're also sorry that we won't be able to see Cot and Lois on this trip since they are back east attending the funeral of Cot's brother who suddenly passed away.

It's breakfast and then back to work...