I did the impossible yesterday: I got home last night when the flight schedules said it couldn’t be done. My schedule in Oklahoma City had me working into the afternoon on Tuesday, well after the last, 10 AM Southwest connection to Raleigh was supposed to have left. As the meeting progressed, though, I could see that I wouldn’t be needed the whole day. Rather than take no for an answer, I sifted through Southwest’s schedules, thinking there must be some way to get home that night.
I’ve done this thing before, so I had a little experience with it. First I looked for Southwest’s nonstop flights from OKC: these cities usually offered the most frequency of flights. From those cities I may find a connection that leads me to Raleigh.
And so I did! A 3:30 flight would take me to Kansas City, from which I could catch a flight to Chicago and then on to Raleigh, arriving at 11:20 PM. Thirty minutes of checking schedules had found me a way home.
I called the Southwest agents and offered my route. The first agent then hit a wall. For some reason the reservation system didn’t like that routing. He mentioned something about an invalid fare choice or something. Being the clever agent he was, though, he found he could book them as separate flights. I would trade my original flight back to Raleigh for a flight into Kansas City, from which I would start a new, one-way booking to Raleigh through Chicago. The new cost would be $180 more since it was a separate flight, so I had to decide if it was worth it. Once I tallied up the cost of my hotel room and car, however, I realized it was a wash. Might as well spend the night in my own bed. I called them back and booked it.
Once I’d made my arrangements, I realized that if I checked my bags, I’d have to re-check them in Kansas City. This would seriously cut into the time I had to change planes. Though the gap was slated to be at least an hour, I didn’t want to take that chance. I couldn’t even check in for the new flight until I got to Kansas City, so I was facing many unknowns.
I went to my meeting and wrapped up my part a bit earlier than I expected. For a change it was nice getting to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately for me, my spare time was a bit more than I anticipated, as the flight was by then running 45 minutes late. With that in mind, I opted not to check my bags, thinking my hour layover in KC was now cut to 15 minutes. It was then that I ran into my latest episode of TSA follies.
As I waited at the OKC gate, the 45 minute delay stretched into an hour delay. My incoming plane hadn’t even left the ground by the time of my original departure. I could either stew about things or go with the flow.
I made the best of it by striking up a conversation with an Army Lt. Colonel who was eventually bound for Iraq. I had trouble picturing this guy as an O-5 as he was far more friendly and gregarious than my idea of officers. I bet his troops love the guy. Once our flight boarded, he took another seat and I watched as he talked the ear off the lady next to him, both of them occasionally doubling over with laughter.
I left Oklahoma City around 4:50: an hour and twenty minutes late. Even so, we made it to Kansas City in time for my next flight. I was glad I didn’t check my bags, as I don’t think I’d have gotten them through.
The Kansas City airport is unlike any airport I’ve seen. It was apparently built in a time where airport security wasn’t a big deal, and then security was retroactively addressed with glass partitions. I walked off my plane and walked out of the secure area without even realizing it. It was literally ten paces from the end of the jetway to the unsecure area. Security is provided for each group of gates by its own set of screeners. It is horribly inefficient. And I still didn’t have my boarding pass.
Thus I was facing another security check, and was sweating since my flight was due to take off in ten minutes. There were a good number of Chicago-bound passengers in line with me, though, so that gave me hope. I was heartened to learn that the pilots just in front of me in line were the pilots for my plane. We obviously weren’t going anywhere without them, so I breathed a sigh of relief.
We took off a little late but made up time in the air. I had time in Chicago to grab a bite to eat and make it to the gate. The flight to Raleigh was 1/3 full and so boarding finished early. I had the row of seats to myself and chilled out to music for the hour’s flight back. We got in at 11:00, twenty minutes early. I was asleep by midnight.
It was another of my Rube Goldberg travel days, but it worked out just fine. I decided later that the reason Southwest doesn’t show flights through Kansas City is due to that airport’s funky, unpredictable security situation. In spite of all that, though, my actual travel time was about as low as any of the other flights I could’ve taken. I don’t think I could’ve gotten home any faster any other way.
If life is about the journey and not the destination, I must be doing something right.
