Stuck in Houston
Why I’ll never fly with Southwest Airlines again
I’m sitting in a La Quinta Inn and Suites in Houston, Texas, miles and miles from home. I should have been in Memphis last night, picking up my poor, scared car, my dear Hugo, from the economy parking at Memphis International Airport. My twin sister and I are on our way back from San Diego, California. We had a connecting flight in Houston. We were due in Memphis around midnight.
Instead, Southwest canceled my flight. Not just my flight — hundreds of people’s flights. With no plan for how to get us home.
They canceled my flight ten minutes before we were to board — with the plane sitting right outside the gate. All of this was after a two and a half hour delay.
My twin sister and I stood in line to see if we could get transferred to another flight — there was a flight for Jackson, Mississippi, leaving around midnight. But it, too, got canceled as we stood there.
I don’t know what problem Southwest was having last night, but we would have all been less angry if they had been transparent about it. Did all the pilots suddenly quit? Was there a glitch in their computer system? Did the planes all suddenly explode?
Or was it a social experiment to see what an airport full of angry people looked like?
It looks like long lines and angry tweets, in case you wondered. Raised voices and silent desperation. I could feel new lines forming around my eyes as I stood there, happy that at least I hadn’t checked my bags.
The next flight to Memphis is Tuesday. Today is Sunday.
If we were younger, we would have gone straight to the rental car desk and rented a car — then we would have driven home. But we were too tired to do that, even if a car had been available. I checked this morning, and there are no cars available in Houston. Not with Enterprise, Budget, Hertz, or Avis. We looked into renting a U-Haul — but it’s hard to do that on a Sunday. Most of the U-Haul places are closed.
We checked Greyhound — all the busses are full.
God bless Amtrak, however. We have booked passage on a train that will take us halfway home. My brother-in-law will meet us at the station and drive us the rest of the way home. It’ll be after midnight by the time we arrive. Tomorrow, I’ll have to get a ride to Memphis to retrieve my car.
Houston to Memphis is about an hour-long flight, but when your flight gets canceled, the distance becomes greater. My sister said that, if we were men, we could hitchhike. But, as women, that would be dangerous and stupid. Life is about the journey — true. But sometimes it’s the destination that matters.
