Katie gave a talk in Albuquerque yesterday afternoon and our quick trip over there proved to be quite an outing. We used frequent flyer miles on Southwest Airlines (one of their fleet of 737s above) to book our trip. Unfortunately, Southwest had eliminated the several flights it had had between Tucson (TUS) and Albuquerque (ABQ) a month or so ago. I considered setting the trip up so that we'd drive to and from Phoenix, where there are many more direct options. But no.... So we were scheduled to fly from Tucson to Los Angeles (LAX) and then on to ABQ on Saturday morning and to return on Sunday afternoon with a flight to San Diego (SAN) and then on to TUS. The short version of this story is that we actually flew on none of these flights!
On Saturday morning the flight to LAX was delayed because of marine-layer fog and low visibility (why was LAX located right at the ocean?). The delay extended so long that we could no longer make our connection to ABQ, and Southwest folks rerouted us on a flight to Las Vegas (LAS) and then a connection to ABQ. This worked but got us in a couple of hours late. It was a very windy weekend across most of the Southwest and our landing was very rough at ABQ. There was a head wind component but also a fairly strong cross wind component and the pilot landed very "hot", but mostly fell out of the sky the last 100 feet or so. Welcome to Albuquerque. Talk went well yesterday and then we headed for home. But now the short wave (see several previous posts) was approaching ABQ.
We were scheduled for a 6:25 pm MDT departure. But a line of thunderstorms had developed and was moving in from the south-southwest (above is 6 pm MDT radar from NCAR RAL) - the NWS ABQ radar is at the plus sign and is located about 20 miles west-northwest of the airport. These storms intensified and moved in rapidly - below is a not-very-good photo of their approach from the concourse at a bit after 6 pm MDT. The heavy rain with the storm, and frequent lightning, shut the airport down and the plane that was to head on to SAN from ABQ had to land at El Paso.
It became clear that this plane would not make it up to ABQ and then on to SAN in time for our connection to the last SAN-TUS flight of the day. Southwest could book us on a flight to Phoenix (PHX), and we decided on this option, since Katie really needed to be back at the University this morning (they did also offer overnight accommodations and flights back this morning). A trailing line of thunderstorms developed (below is regional radar at 8 pm MDT) and these storms delayed the flight to PHX by about another 2 hours.
We did eventually get to PHX; rented a car: and arrived home after midnight. Very tired, but glad not to be in a hotel in ABQ. We started out the day today having to return the rental car and retrieve my car from the airport parking lot. So it goes.
I think this story illuminates what the future may hold for many of us, as the airlines reduce service and flights to mid-sized cities and completely eliminate flights to smaller cities. Not a pretty picture.
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