Fly The Unapologetic Inconvenient Skies Of U.S. Airways

What is worse than getting up at 3:30am, loading up the car and driving a bit more than an hour to the airport to board a plane for Newark, only to sit on that plane on the airport tarmac for a little more than an hour because A) the wings need de-icing, and B) there is a small mechanical problem regarding the heat/A/C packets...and then having to disembark from said plane (because, well, the heat/A/C packet problem is not so small) and have to stand in line with your fellow passengers for an hour and a half in order to get booked on a later flight to Newark?

When, after standing in line for 90 minutes to rebook a flight the only seat available to Newark is via a flight to Dallas (yes, Dallas). And that flight leaves Denver at 2:55 in the afternoon, arrives in the heart of Texas at 5:50, and the connecting flight to Newark leaves at 7:10...finally arriving at Liberty International at 11:20 Saturday night.

Not the 2:30 in the afternoon the early flight was quite deliberately booked to allow for. No one in their right mind books a flight for the East Coast with an early morning departure unless they have something planned for that evening...right? Right.

Something like, dinner with the family members and friends that were able to fly out earlier in the week due more flexible work schedules and the like. 

That's worse.

But wait, there's more. Since it's only just after 10:00 in the morning when this godawful inconvenient rebooking has been completed, and 2:55 is nearly 5 hours away, it makes sense to leave the airport to get a decent breakfast down the road...except, even though it's only been five and a half hours since you parked, you have to pay for a full day of parking...and then, after returning to the airport two hours later the whole rigamarole of going through security has to be performed...and after waiting in that line, the TSA officer tells you that a boarding pass is needed - the rebooking people only provided an itinerary page, not a boarding pass.

So you make your way back through the security line, up to ticketing, and get a boarding pass. Then you go through security one more time and get to the gate...only to look at your seat assignment and realize that the wonderful aisle seat you had (aisle seat - handy when you're a tad larger than average) is now a middle seat. 

That's when it becomes much worse.