Traveling for Christmas

For more than 10 years my wife and I have spent Christmas in sunny Arizona. This year, it became very questionable as to whether the trip from Scottsbluff to Peoria would happen.

We had tickets in hand, bags packed, a dog sitter lined up, everything ready to go, but it almost didn’t happen this year.

Our flight was to fly out of Scottsbluff at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 22 and arrived at Sky Harbor in Phoenix at about 10:30 p.m. But record low temperatures decided to throw a monkey wrench into our plans.

We arrived an hour-and-a-half before our flight was to leave, made it through check-in and security without any problems. A text informed us that the flight was delayed by an hour, which was going to make the connection tight, but everything was still a go.

It was while going through security I realized, I didn’t have my cell phone. So, after finding seats and my wife settled in for about a 30-minute wait, I headed out of security to find my phone. 

As I walked into our house, in search of the phone, our dog setter asked, “You didn’t go back for Linda?”

I looked at her with a strangely and asked, “Why would I do that?”

“Linda just called, your flight has been cancelled,” she said. “Oh, you don’t have your phone.”

No, I didn’t. So, I climbed back into my car and headed back to the airport. My phone was waiting for me at the airport.

We sat in the terminal and waited for a chance to reschedule our flights.

After everyone else had rebooked, Linda and I headed up to the counter. There were seats on the Friday flight to Denver, but no seats available from Denver to Phoenix. Then two seats came up, then they disappeared. But the young lady with Sky West kept working and soon, she had us on a flight from Denver to our destination on Friday. A day later than planned, but we would get there before Christmas.

On Friday we were again packed and ready to go and then, about an hour before we were to leave for the airport a text message arrived. Our flight from Scottsbluff to Denver was once again, cancelled. Checking the website, it didn’t look like there were any seats available to Phoenix, but we decided to head to the airport and see what we could work out, if anything.

At this point, I was about ready to give up. Instead of celebrating with our oldest daughter, her husband, and two grandkids, it would be Linda and I, with our two Basset Hounds, Bentley and Sammy. Not what we had planned, but we will have to make do.

Once again, the people with SkyWest went out of their way to help. They searched and searched, at first it didn’t look good, but then, like the night before, two seats were found. We were on flight 1185 from Denver to Phoenix. We would arrive in the sunshine at about 3:30 p.m. on Saturday.

On Saturday, we found ourselves at the airport, waiting to board a flight that was in Denver, about to take off for Scottsbluff, but it was delayed.

Were we experiencing a case of deja vu?

According to Flight Tracker over 12,000 flights were cancelled from Wednesday through Saturday because of weather. We had been scheduled on two of those already.

This time, the flight, though delayed, arrived. We boarded and got air board. The SkyWest crew knew us by now and were great to work with.

The flight from Denver to Phoenix was routine. And seeing our daughter and son-in-law was a welcome sight.

From then on, we enjoyed a great Christmas with family and our flights home were without incident. But, thanks to below zero temps and some not-so-fun travel challenges it is a Christmas that will not soon be forgotten.

And the crew at SkyWest welcomed us back home when our flight landed at Western Nebraska Regional Airport.