I’d like to thank everyone for posting here, as the comments were a good read as I tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep on the floor of the Denver airport. Knowing that my situation was not unique in Denver was one thing, reading about fellow customers all over the US made me feel like part of a large family. –A family of dissolutioned, sleep-deprived, sheeple (sheep + people). As if we could all reach out and sing “We are the World” together. Like everyone else here I was frustrated by the communication more than anything. My first cancelled flight to Tampa was cancelled 30 minutes before departure, after listing as “delayed”, then back “on-time”, then “delayed” again. They offered me a flight to Tampa in 3 DAYS, I was told that was all they had. After getting my head around what the CSR was saying to me, I asked for anything in Florida period, and was booked for the next evening to Orlando—not home, but close enough. The next evening I was on the Orlando flight as it taxied in what could only be called a 2-hour-guided-tour-of-the-airport’s-runway-system ---fascinating stuff folks! Seems “winds” were the culprit and we had to wait our turn to take off. We were all so excited when they gave the OK to take off; but it was too good to be true, because our pilot had “timed out”-- meaning we were returning to the terminal for them to find us a new crew, and then we would be on our way. 2 MORE hours later, the flight was cancelled. I don’t like to fly, and I had just sat in a plane for 4 hours to go nowhere. Now I was told they could get me to Tampa, but not until the NEXT evening—but the way, I was offered NO compensation for this—they hadn’t decided what they were going to do yet when I left the line. I of course, found a store that sold minty fresh gum, baby wipes, and deodorant—if we’re all going to be stuck together, I don’t want to offend my fellow miserable passengers—and went in search of my bags AGAIN. Once again, the communication was horrible, there were no hotels to be found, Southworst did nothing to offer transportation to other hotels, or even acknowledge that they knew there were no rooms in the area. They just kept handing out these little papers with a 1-800 number for discounted rooms. When you called they said they had no rooms for the Denver airport anymore. So I wondered around, marveled at the stranded boy scouts -who had actually pitched their tents and were “roughing it” in the ticketing area (they deserve a special badge for that) – and went in search of a way to charge my phone. At 3:30am I stood in the Southworst ticketing queue and basically kept circling through asking each time if there were any seats on an earlier flight, while also checking online on my dying cell phone. At 8 am, I did get lucky and get flight earlier than the 6:30 pm one –which I later found out was delayed by 90 minutes— When I checked my luggage for the third time, I informed the ticket agent that “My luggage must weigh less each time I turn it in, because it has fewer hopes and dreams in it.” I was trying to be light-hearted about the situation, but I am a mother of 3 and I could not have imagined the situation if I had had children with me. Southworst needs to refund every single passenger the full fare for each of those cancelled flights. Regardless if they did ended up getting you where you needed to be, the financial-cost of those who found a hotel room, or the human-cost of emotion, time, and discomfort are surely worth our money back.
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