I just got back from a really long two days of traveling and I have some advice for everyone. Do not fly into small Colorado airports. It’s not that the airports themselves are bad, it’s just that in these airports, what can go wrong, will go wrong.

For instance, our United flight was delayed in Aspen because of some mechanical failure, which meant it was late getting to Denver and then later getting to our airport in Grand Junction. This caused us to miss our connection from Denver to Philly yesterday. At first, this didn’t seem like a huge deal. The woman in Grand Junction was very nice and tried to get us the best possible flight home as soon as possible. She booked us on a US Airways flight that left Denver at 7:30 AM the next day and got into Philly at 1:00 in the afternoon. She told us she oversold the flight by one seat, but as long as we checked in early, we’d be fine getting seats.

We kept our original tickets on the off chance that we could catch our original flight, but as the announcements came over the loudspeaker it was clear we weren’t going to make it. We finally made it to Denver, went to United customer service, who were very helpful and put us in a hotel with some meal vouchers. Unfortunately, this hotel was a 30 minute shuttle ride from the airport which meant that to check into our flight the next day we’d have to take a 5:00 AM shuttle.

Our wakeup call came at 4:30, we got ready and went to the airport to check in. Then a funny thing happened. I’m a Silver Preferred member at US Airways, so I got in the short line and gave the man at the counter my information. Then he told me that he didn’t have us on the flight. I was confused, but gave him the confirmation code, which he looked up and then told us that the United agent who booked the flight hadn’t actually checked with US Airways and so even the one seat that was open was now sold and they had a full flight which meant we were out of luck.

Then we had to wait in line for 2 hours from 6:30 – 8:30 in the morning because United had cancelled a morning flight from Denver to Chicago O’Hare which meant tons of people were trying to get help with new flights. When we finally talked to someone who was also helpful but we had to fly from Denver to Orlando and then Orlando to Philly in order to make it back today.

Now, we’re finally home and very tired. I also don’t trust flying into small airports anymore.

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