That was a flight that I don't want to repeat! LJ and I had a simple PHX-SAN flight home on America West, departing PHX at 4:20 pm. At 3:00 pm, there was an announcement that the inbound from Houston had been delayed due to weather. Our new ETA was now 5:45. At 4:30 or so, we were told to change gates so the lot of us had to march to the new (and far away) gate. Every 15 minutes we were given an apology and a new 15 minute delay. Eventually the aircraft showed up and we were on the plane around 5:45.

At 6:00, the pilot announced that the ground crew had not provided the paperwork for the weight and pax list. We would be delayed another 15 minutes. A few minutes later, we all observed a flurry of activity around the lavatories. It seemed that 3 or the 4 were not working. At 6:20 we had paperwork but no lavatories. Another delay to fix toilets. At this point people were really getting annoyed and in my section, 3 guys (who didn't know each other) were shouting out "take off! free flight! free drinks! this sucks!" etc... At 7:00, the plane took off.

The next 50 minutes were hell. The guy behind me kept swearing and demanding a free flight. The man to the right of LJ kept drinking. The people to our far right kept going on about how bad the customer service was and if the flight crew didn't watch their step, then they'd regret going up against these particular passengers. The kid in front of me kept bouncing out of her seat. Another random dude kept getting up to check the lavatories and quiz the flight attendent. After all, it was all her fault, according to him!

We land on the ground in SD at 6:50 pm. There's no gate. We're told 10 minutes. Loud profanity erupts. A mom starts chewing out another pax for swearing in front of small children. That guy backs off but others don't. They start stomping on the floor instead. The pilot comes on to try and shut them up. People are demanding to get off the plane. The dumb guy decides to talk to the pilots and goes up front. He comes back. No surprise, they're not letting him into the cockpit. 10, 15, 20 minutes go by. More stomping on the floor. Finally at 7:30, they aircraft is allowed at the gate and we are free.

The pilots and all the flight crew are lined up to take our complaints. No surprise but all of the troublemakers were all talk and too afraid to talk to the flight crew so they rush off the plane basically over the rest of us.

It's now 4 hours until my next flight. I really hope this travel day is better!

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