Airports, People, and Holidays. A story of a girl.

So, I have decided that since I spend 6 out of 7 days of any given week at the airport working it is time that I shared some of my stories with the world. Some will make you laugh and some will make you cry but it is the world of travel and emotions run very high inside the walls of the airport. Trust me.

So to start off my new angle on blogging is a story that happened to me somewhere around Dec. 20th or 21st of 2008.

I had been working several days at 18 or 20 hours a day because Seattle and Portland had been dealing with freezing rain and 90% of our flights had canceled because of the weather there. The reason being that Seattle and Portland are the major hub airports for the airline I work for along with the many other airlines that serve these two major airports in the Pacific Northwest.

I was about half way through my day and all I had seen all day long were the same faces of the same people that I had been dealing with for the previous 2 or 3 days. I had a younger girl approach me and ask me if there was anyway to get to Portland or Pullman, WA. I looked and told her that her only hope was going to be Pullman if she wanted to go anywhere in the next 3 to 5 days. Yes that is really how backed up our flights were. The weather started the Friday before Christmas and kept at it until the Tuesday before. So our company alone displaced thousands and thousands of people that were going to visit loved ones for the holiday. The highways and roads between Boisea and Seattle had been closed on and off as well so driving was not a great option either.

Back to this girl, Sorry. So as I was booking her a flight to Pullman, for those of you who don't know where that is. It is about 45 min. away from Lewiston ID. Not far from Moscow, ID home of UofI. She began telling me the story of how a trip from Oakland CA, going to Portland had landed her in Boise, ID. This girl and boarder her flight on Friday night totally clueless to the weather that was about to hit Portland. By the time the aircraft got to Portland it was to bad for them to land. So they do the next safest thing and divert the airplane Reno, NV of all places. I guess that was the closest airport with somewhat good weather. So she gets to Reno, where she knows no one and because it is due to a weather situation we are not providing hotel rooms or anything else of these people. She manages to get a flight out of Reno to the only place she can Boise. She comes to Boise where thankfully she has and Aunt. She spends a few days here making efforts everyday to get a flight to Portland to have Christmas with her Grandmother as planned but has no success. So on this day she finally comes to the conclusion that she just needs to get out of Boise as soon as she can because if she can't she may not until New Years. That was the case with some of our passengers by the way. So she calls her sister at U of I and asks if she can come there for Christmas instead. So, I send this girl off to Pullman. She looks at me and smiles as I hand her the new ticket after finding her a flight the day after Christmas to Portland just 2 days before she is suppose to go back to Oakland. So that she can still see her Grandmother even though her Holiday plans had been ruined by for lack of a better person to blame... ME. She gives me a big hug and thanks me for all that I had done. She was not the only person grateful mind you but she was the only one that gave me a hug. I was at the end of my rope that day. I had been yelled at and verbally abused more than once a day while this was all going on and this girl who honestly was about my age was so nice and just grateful that she was going to be with someone in her family for the holiday.

As she left, and I was getting ready to call it a day and go home to pack so that I could go home for what would be my first Christmas at home in 4 years. I was to grateful for my family and my friends and the chance that we all have to celebrate. Just do me a favor and plan in advance. Try not to fly with 5 days of Christmas, because the weather sucks in the winter in Idaho and Utah and a lot of other places in the country and chances are things will either be delayed or canceled and you do not want to be one of the thousands of people that spent 4 days sleeping on the floor in the Seattle airport this last December.

I love what I do. I meet interesting people some nice... some not so nice but all of them are going somewhere to either see family or celebrate something. In those cases where I get the passenger that is on the way to say goodbye to a family member to loved one, I want to cry with them because it is a hard thing to do and traveling... Lets be honest it is stressful, not really what you want to be dealing with when you are already upset. I laugh with the ones that are on the way to Mexico or Hawaii to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries. I tease the ones that are going to Las Vegas, cause we all know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And I get to see the lit up faces of little kids getting to get on an airplane for the first time and the excitement and the thrill that they are about to have. Travel often with family if you can, it may be a road trip or by air but it always create memories that we never forget.