It's good to be home

I spent this past weekend in Kansas City visiting my parents and hanging out for my nephew's 2nd birthday. It was great to be out there, see everyone, catch up, see the new houses, see my nephew who I haven't seen since he was 8 months old; but it's good to be back home. Last night was a killer flight. I picked a late flight so we could hang out most of the day Sunday. I figured the drive from PHX wouldn't be too bad and I'd be fast asleep by 1 at the latest. Nope...

I showed up at the airport an hour and a half before my flight took off. MCI isn't a very busy airport, so you can practically show up 30 minutes before a flight and still get through security. When I got there, the flight was delayed 15 minutes. No biggy. After grabbing a soda from $tarbucks I went through security with around an hour before boarding. The thing you have to know about MCI is that once you're through security, you're their's. No food (except a kiosk that closes at 9), no water fountains, and not nearly enough seats.

After hanging out for 15 minutes or so we get the "I hate to be the barer of bad news, but..." speech. The flight was now shooting for a 10:40 departure instead of 9:15. Great. We didn't start boarding the plane until 10:45, and it was at least 11:10 before we pushed off. I'm cranky, my blood sugar's all off, and I'm tired. Well, at least I'll grab a pillow and catch a cat nap before I drive back up to Flagstaff. Nope. They've got maybe a 70% full plane; the plane's been sitting at the gate for nearly an hour and a half; and somehow it didn't dawn on them that a flight that was leaving at 11 PM would need to have a few pillows! Seriously, I'm maybe the 30th person to get on the plane and the crew announces that they're out of pillows and blankets and that if anyone has more than one and wants to share, to please pass it back out to the aisle. Umm... excuse me?

So, that's it. I'm done with Southwest if I can at all help it. The lack of assigned seating, the "we're only delaying 15 minutes, even though your crew hasn't left the ground in the other city yet" lying through their teeth to keep me from canceling my ticket and walking over to one of their competitors that does get their planes off of the ground on time, and the inability to forecast the needs of their customers, like, you know... needing pillows on a 3 hour flight at 11 PM! Seriously? Is it that hard to figure out?