Flight from Hell!

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I had the craziest experience flying back to Dallas from Birmingham last night on Southwest. At first everything looked good - flight was ontime, boarding was smooth - but I noticed that we took a long time to push back from the gate. So happens that the long runway was shut down for maintenence, and the fully loaded 737 was too heavy to take off from the short runway. So - they ditched ALL of the bags (I thought Southwest liked bags) and about 15 passengers so that the plane could take off before reaching the end of the runway (yes - I stayed on like an idiot). LOL They said that they'd send the bags later that evening on another flight. The takeoff was very nerve racking - but we made it with about 50 feet to spare.

If that's not bad enough, about 50 miles outside of landing in Dallas we were instantly diverted to Austin, TX because of a lightening storm that stalled over Love Field. After about 45 minutes we landed in Austin. The good news is they let us off the plane so that we could get food and go to the bathroom. We finally ended up in Dallas after being delayed 3 hours (which could've been worse).

Now - remember - I STILL don't have my bags from earlier when they offloaded them! I had to wait at the airport until 9pm to get my bags (which were soaking wet from the storm). I did get a $100 travel voucher for my troubles, but all-in-all I was delayed by more than 6 hours and didn't get home until close to 10PM! WOW WHAT A DAY!

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