Flying to Hawaii

We spent a wonderful seven days on Oahu last week, but it did not begin auspiciously. Everything seemed fine when we went to the Austin airport on Saturday. We arrived in good time, we even got a lift in a van from our car to the airport entrance. But when I identified myself in the self-check in kiosk, the monitor display the terse message "Plane already left gate"

WTF?!? I frantically checked my itinerary printout only to discover that I had looked at the Los Angeles arrival time instead of the Austin departure time the night before! Apparently we haven't learned from our "missed flight lesson" in Brazil (me to double check the dates and times, and Jfer to not take me by my work).

Now, as we lined up for the manual checkin, I had visions of expensive rebookings and days spent on stand-by. Luckily, AA came through for us. They booked us on stand-by to Dallas, which we made. However, that flight was delayed, so we had to race across DFW to our Honolulu stand-by. We made that one too -- and actually arrivied in Honolulu ahead of our original arrival time (via LA)!

Magda was awake pretty much all of the flight and spent the wast majority of it with Jfer. I didn't get to sit with them, but beggars can't be choosers. Beside, they were only one row over.

We did manage to get our flight back home without a hitch. And this time, Magda slept all the way from Hawaii to LA, and then a good portion of the way from LA to Austin.

BTW, flying from Austin to Hawaii, it's much nicer to connect via Houston or DFW -- that way you won't have to change planes in LA at some early morning hour on the way back. And you get to fly with a bigger plane most of the way. Oh, and they're not kidding about cutting their costs: we got some measly drinks but had to pay AA $5.00 for a crummy turkey sandwitch.