Airline: FAIL

So, we arrived at the airport with almost two hours to spare. The flight was ON TIME on the website. It was ON TIME at the check-in counter. It was ON TIME at the gate. Until ten minutes before boarding time, 5:55, when the guy at the desk told us they'd been "informed" that there would be an "extensive delay" on flight 958 - it wouldn't be leaving until 8:45, which meant most of its connections would be missed.

Including our flight to Manchester.

He told us that we should see him at the counter if we were going to miss a connection, so half the people in the gate jumped up and got in line. Half of them were on the phone, including one of my companions. He had no luck, don't know about them. In front of us was a girl who had started out the day that morning in Jacksonville, Florida, and been routed to Atlanta, New York, and back to BWI on her way to Portland, Maine. She was ready to melt down (I have to say that, listening to what the guy at the gate was telling her, it sounded to us like she was getting to Manchester, New Hampshire ... at midnight ... via National. What a day...).

While we were waiting, the plane arrived at the gate and the people disembarking didn't look like they'd been discommoded, let alone terrified. Given the precision of the announcement, I'd lay any amount of money that they had run out of pilots. That really made me angry, because if they'd told us when we got there that things were running late, we could have driven to Philadelphia.

When we finally got to the desk the guy puttered around on a keyboard for a while and then asked the guy next to him about international travelers. That guy said, sounding like he'd said it before, "We can't help them."

Yeah. We were supposed to go to the ticket counter up front. All international travelers were. I said, "May I suggest you announce that first thing before people stand in line for thirty minutes?" and walked away from the counter before I said something rude. I then announced, loudly, "International travelers - they can't help you. We have to go to the counter out front." Six people peeled out of line, and they all walked faster than us... Sigh.

Anyway, the people at the counter up front offered us the US Airways flight tomorrow night. They said they "couldn't" put us on a different airline. Well, we don't have the right to commit to a weekend in England (though it would be nice), so instead we called the agent and canceled the flight (the nice thing about the government's straitjacket travel policies is that we do get penalty-free cancellations).

Next we encountered the one person at US Airways who seemed to know what she was doing and intended to get it done: the baggage claim agent. She took our claim checks and got on the phone. After a couple moments, she hung the phone without having said anything and picked up the radio. "I'm trying to call 659 and it's still busy," she announced. "I need bags off 958. Someone answer." Someone did, and within five minutes our bags were on carousel ten...

So we didn't leave tonight. Maybe we'll still get there... But we're not going on US Airways, I can tell you that.