Sky Harbor and Delta

I am currently sitting in Sky Harbor International Airport using their free wi-fi.  They claim to be the friendliest airport and they just might be living up to their claim (except for the TSA agent who took my way less than 3 oz. of Aveda product after it has never been taken on previous flights - but I'm not bitter :)).  When having to sit and wait at the airport for 9 hours, things like free wi-fi make the time a lot less boring.

We were supposed to be on the 3:10 flight back to MSP but as we're boarding the gate agents were asking for volunteers to give up their seats because of a weight restriction.  (Don't worry - I've never heard of a weight restriction either.)  Ross and I debated back and forth about whether or not to give up our seats.  Our biggest debate was not coming home to E-man tonight - we miss him and he has been asking about us every day since we left.  They needed 11 volunteers and they were giving 400 dollar credit per passenger PLUS vouchers for food and/or hotels and a booking on a red-eye flight that would get us home by early morning tomorrow.  We literally scanned in our boarding passes and then changed our minds and decided to give up our seats.  After talking with the very friendly gate agents, they informed us that Delta really shouldn't even be sending this small of a plane with this type of engine to PHX because of the heat.  They rarely have a 'weight restriction' but this plane requires it with the combo of small engines and heat ... so our original flight left with 19 seats open to make the weight requirement.  Isn't that interesting (for those of you who like to 'know things' you probably appreciate my story)?!  Oh and by the way it was definitely about 108 to 111 degrees every day which was amazing.  The 6% humidity makes it hot but comfortable to us and we enjoyed it very much but apparently certain planes don't enjoy the extreme heat.

So here we sit - 800 dollars richer in Delta dollars and we are SO grateful!  We have two trips coming up - a friend's wedding in Atlanta at the end of August and a trip to the Philly area in late September.  Both of those trips were going to put some stress on our tight summer budget but those trips are most likely completely covered now thanks to Delta.  Yes, we will probably be exhausted this weekend and we are VERY grateful to Diane and Jerry for watching E-man over night but we are also really thankful for the provision of flights for these upcoming trips.