Worst travel day thus far

If I told you, would wouldn't believe me, but I'll tell ya anyway.

I was dropped off at the Grand Junction airport about 12:15p on Friday. Having just finished up two loan closings for clients, happy and excited for a Vegas weekend getaway, all systems go. Until they weren't.

After getting thru TSA and settling into the firm pleather seat, started getting updates from flightsware.com of delays on the inbound flight.

The passengers on the inbound flight were boarded and pushed back from the gate 2 minutes early, but that's the last time early will be used in this article...while until my alarm Sat morning. Anyways, those passengers sat on the plane for over 3 hours while maintenance fixed a cooling issue. Keep in mind it was 113 in Vegas. Thankfully it was an issue with an system other than the cabin, though passengers said it was north of 80 degrees inside the cabin.

That flight finally arrived in GJ around 5p. Just a few hours late of our scheduled 2:34p departure. Allegiant was quick to turn the plane and get us onboard, and we were taking off around 6p.

Upon takeoff, knew something wasn't right almost immediately as we were not climbing to a normal altitude. I knew before the announcement was made, we started to turn, a fairly significant bank and then the deeded announcement be the pilot, the same issues as the prior delay was causing the cabin to not pressurize and we had to turn back.

We circled GJ several times and finally (and thankfully) heard the landing gear come down and we were back on the ground. A 45 minute flight to the Utah State Line and back.

We proceeded to sit on the tarmac for another 45 minutes and finally deplaned via a fire truck lattder thingy and walked back to the terminal.

It was a rough day here in GJ. Another Allegaint flight from Cincinnati to Denver got diverted to GJ, along with a United flight, a Frontier Flight and then ours with our mechanical issue.

Cop cars, fire trucks, and more people in the terminal than I have ever seen or imagined before. The announcements continued, and our flight was cancelled. Not rescheduled. Just canceled.

I was headed to Vegas to see Kelly Clarkson. A friend from LA was flying in, Patricia and Meagan from GJ were already in Vegas. Uggh. Hotel reservations were in my name. Check-in at the hotel was a mess for Patricia and Meagan.

What should have been a quick/fun weekend in Vegas has turned into a complete shit show. I guess I am thankful that thr travel gods shit on me on this trip and not one of the international trips, but Onalso find a little humor in what should have been the quickest/simplest has turned into one of the biggest travel disruptions of my life.

Having been dropped off at the airport, I had no car, and my multiple attempts at Uber and Lyft cancelled at me, so a few calls to friends and Christine and Kayla came to pick me up.

On hold with Allegaint while I waited, I wanted to be sure my return flight on Monday was still active. I had to decide, do I jump in the car and start driving. I could have already arrived on Vegas 2 hours ago if I would have just done that at noon. Driving wouldn't get me into town until 3-4a, and it had already been a long day.

Flight options on American and United were limited, and expensive. I ended up snagging THE LAST SEAT on a 6:30a American flight from GJT to Phoenix and then onto Vegas. To the tune of WAY too many airline miles, but thankfully not a $2100 one way ticket that was the list price. Thankful to have the miles, and also quite pissed this was how I was having to use them.

I am now standby on an earlier flight from Phoenix to Vegas. But worst case, I'll arrive in Vegas around 11:30a...about a 21 hour delay.

Here's to hoping the luck changes real quick.

Cole from Colorado.