March 25, 2018. Madison, Mississippi. Airlines.

Everyone was sitting at the gate waiting to board the plane for Jackson. Suddenly phones started to ping. Passengers started to get in line. Rita does not have an American plan on her phone. Instead she uses e mails to communicate but she had not been unable to access the Internet at the Dallas airport, so she asked fellow passengers what was going on. This was when she got the bad news. The flight was cancelled and they would leave on a 7:30 flight tomorrow morning. No one from the airline made an announcement and passengers were never told why the flight had been cancelled. They were given vouchers for accommodation, dinner and breakfast. Soon they were on the way to a Sheraton, without any belongings except their purse. They were given a tooth brush, tooth paste and comb but left to sleep in their skivvies except Rita borrowed the robe from the closet to keep her warm. But they slept poorly as they knew they were required to be at the airport at 5:30 in order to get the 7:30 flight. Ian woke up every hour in order not to oversleep. By the time they arrived home to us at 10:00, they were weary so took a quick nap before Christina and the girls arrived with lunch. They were not happy campers. Believe it or not, in all his travels around the world, Ian has never had a flight cancelled. We were amazed. Ken and I have been in that situation so often that we carry night shirts and toilet items in our. backpack. The airlines could at least give passengers an explanation and an apology. But at least Rita and Ian were not out of pocket and they were able to walk the 20 minutes to the shuttle bus. Fortunately, we decided to fly home Air Ambulance. What a mess we would have had trying to get Ken to the hotel. Our wheelchair and walker would have been checked and we would have been using the airline wheelchair. How on earth could we have gotten Ken to and on the shuttle. Some days, you just get lucky.