33 Hours Of Delays And A First Class Upgrade Later, Goodbye! – ATL Terminal F – Atlanta, GA

It’s the first day of our adventure, and we’re not off to the start that we expected! We arrived at the Newark airport bright and early, ready for a quick flight to Atlanta, a long connection there, then onward to Managua, Nicaragua. Instead, we were met with the perplexing scenario where our plane was at the gate, but our flight was delayed.

We should have known that something was wrong when most of the people waiting for our flight left the gate area. What could they be doing? Oh… they were filling up the remaining seats on the other flight to Atlanta 40 minutes later. So there we waited. One hour turned into many hours, and it soon became clear that it would be impossible for us to make an outbound flight from Atlanta to Managua today.

The gentleman at the gate sensed our defeat, and offered us a silver lining – first class seats on a flight to Atlanta later that night, a hotel room, and a rebooking on a flight to Managua the next afternoon. And some vouchers to go spend at a wine bar in the Newark airport. Deal… but did we really have a choice?

A whopping 33 hours of delays later and we’re finally getting this party started – hasta pronto!