Josh's story of flight 2821

Okay, so the title of this page sounds very serious. Actually, what happened was pretty serious. Let's start with the news wire report picked up from the October 7th, 2000 Denver Post:

There is also a larger news report from the Deseret News that I got from their news archive.

Now that you know the basic facts, on with the story. The first thing that happened was that our ears started popping like crazy - about 20 times in a minute. Then, the oxygen masks opened up and were just hanging out. Everybody was so amazed that the masks came down that we didn't know what to do. We didn't even put the masks on until the captain came on the PA and said, "Okay folks, we're going to ask you to put on and use those oxygen masks." My thought at the time was, "This never happens!" so I decided to try to take a picture of Rahbeka wearing her mask - it didn't quite work out so well as you can see here. However, you can see the tube that carries the oxygen and the bag, which in fact does not actually inflate, in the lower left corner.

While we were trying to breathe normally with the masks, the plane descended sharply and there was an announcement that we would be making an "unscheduled stop" in Las Vegas. At about the same time, the plane made this huge turn and started to get ready to land. We were looking out the windows thinking, "This is NOT Las Vegas" and landed on this tiny little airstrip that I didn't even see until we basically touched down. After the landing we learned that we had actually landed in Bryce Canyon, Utah at the airport just outside of the national park.

We disembarked from the plane through the stairs at the back and wandered over to the airport area. While we were walking, I took pictures of Rahbeka and one back towards the plane.
My beautiful wife
Looking back at the plane

After spending several hours at the Bryce Canyon airport getting updates that went a lot like, "Okay folks, gather around. We don't know what's going on so we'll have to wait more." Joy. Actually, the airline and airport personnel were all very helpful, it's just that nobody knew what we should do.
In this picture to the left, you can see the fire truck that was there, the hangar/barn of the airport on the right and the airport itself in the distance on the left.

Finally, they said that we were to be driven by bus to Las Vegas where we would continue our air travels. Fortunately for Rahbeka and me, we had befreinded a woman who got one of the three available rental cars in Bryce Canyon. We went to the nearby town to get the car and I took the opportunity to take more pictures of the scene.
In this shot, you can see the words, "Bryce Canyon Airport" written on the side of the barn and the MD80 jet to the right of it.

We got in our rental car and high-tailed it to Las Vegas, where a news crew was waiting for the passengers to arrive to get more on the story. We had beaten the bus to the airport, though we never saw it on our drive -very odd. Rahbeka and I gave the TV crew an interview, but we weren't around to see if it made it on any of the local news reports. At the American Airlines counter and they gave us a little "apology packet" that included an apology letter offering us each a $1000 travel voucher, a phone card, an airport meal voucher and some in-flight drink coupons. American had also booked us on an America West flight to San Francisco so we would be able to get to our final destination.

We ate dinner at the airport and went over to the America West gate, where we found out that our flight was delayed. We finally boarded the plane, pulled away from the gate, and then the plane just sat on the tarmac for a while. Eventually, the pilot came on the PA and said that we had to return to the gate because of a problem with the PRESSURIZATION SYSTEM - pressurization problems were following us around! After getting off and then back on the plane, two and a half hours later the America West flight was cancelled. We ran to the American counter to ask them to put us on another flight. American booked us on a United flight that the computers said had left, but the airport workers knew hadn't yet, and said if we hurried we could make it. We rushed through the Las Vegas airport and made the plane. We finally arrived in San Francisco at midnight, PST, after having left DIA at 7am that morning. There are other side stories and details I've left out here, but mainly I wanted to tell a brief story and show our pictures. If you want higher quality versions of any of these pictures, drop me an email and I'll see what I can do. Anyway, I hope you liked the story of our amazing, scary, frustrating, long trip to San Francisco.

Josh

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