Jet Plane
All of our friends already know about our crappy jet-plane experience, but I thought I'd record it here for later remembering.
The bare-bones are that we took off from DIA at about 5pm on a Tuesday. We circled the airport for about 2 hours, then experienced and emergency landing. We sat at the gate for 1.5 hours, during which time no one was allowed to deplane for food or any other reason. Then we took off again, circled DIA for another 45 minutes or so, and then flew to Portland. What was supposed to be a two hour flight turned into about seven hours and of course our connection was long gone. We had to stand in line to get our coupons and such for lodging and food and to make travel arrangements. By the time we got to the front of the queue, it was 12:30 at night (1:30 MT) and the kids were wired like cattle prods. Leo did endless frenetic laps on the moving escalator and Isa hung on the front of me with big red exhausted eyes and an occasional, forlorn wail. The airline offered us a flight at 6 am, meaning we'd have to make the airport at 5 am, meaning we'd have to wake up at 4am. Assuming half an hour from the gate to the hotel, and half an hour to get our children settled into sleep, that's a whopping 2.5 hours of sleep for our 3 year old and 3 month old. We politely told them to shove it and rented a car for the last leg of our journey.
We woke up when the children were ready to (still not much sleep, but better than 2.5 hours) at about 9am, got breakfast, then spent the rest of the morning (and early afternoon) visiting with a friend in town we hadn't seen in several years. It was very pleasant to see her and her kiddos.
The return trip to Denver was much more straightforward and our little ones fared much better.
Note to self: Always bring REAL food on the airplane with you, especially if you are traveling with children. (The airline did not provide any real food (only mini-pretzels - about an ounce - and sodas) to the coach passengers during our 7 hour ordeal, even the children. If we hadn't had real food to give our boy, he would have been in trouble.)
The bare-bones are that we took off from DIA at about 5pm on a Tuesday. We circled the airport for about 2 hours, then experienced and emergency landing. We sat at the gate for 1.5 hours, during which time no one was allowed to deplane for food or any other reason. Then we took off again, circled DIA for another 45 minutes or so, and then flew to Portland. What was supposed to be a two hour flight turned into about seven hours and of course our connection was long gone. We had to stand in line to get our coupons and such for lodging and food and to make travel arrangements. By the time we got to the front of the queue, it was 12:30 at night (1:30 MT) and the kids were wired like cattle prods. Leo did endless frenetic laps on the moving escalator and Isa hung on the front of me with big red exhausted eyes and an occasional, forlorn wail. The airline offered us a flight at 6 am, meaning we'd have to make the airport at 5 am, meaning we'd have to wake up at 4am. Assuming half an hour from the gate to the hotel, and half an hour to get our children settled into sleep, that's a whopping 2.5 hours of sleep for our 3 year old and 3 month old. We politely told them to shove it and rented a car for the last leg of our journey.
We woke up when the children were ready to (still not much sleep, but better than 2.5 hours) at about 9am, got breakfast, then spent the rest of the morning (and early afternoon) visiting with a friend in town we hadn't seen in several years. It was very pleasant to see her and her kiddos.
The return trip to Denver was much more straightforward and our little ones fared much better.
Note to self: Always bring REAL food on the airplane with you, especially if you are traveling with children. (The airline did not provide any real food (only mini-pretzels - about an ounce - and sodas) to the coach passengers during our 7 hour ordeal, even the children. If we hadn't had real food to give our boy, he would have been in trouble.)
posted by LeosMama at 2:13 PM
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