In the summer of '99, I had been in Raleigh to visit my gf and was riding Aitran back from RDU to MEM with the obligatory stop in ATL (their hub). Airtran had just been acquired by the ill-fated ValuJet in a reverse merger, and was having serious teething issues and flying ValuJet's old diesel 9's.

I left RDU in the early evening and landed at ATL without incident. I deboarded and walked into the crowded Concourse C to find out my flight to Memphis was delayed at least an hour. I didn't think too much about it, since the weather wasn't an issue, and I could go to a bar for drink. Meanwhile, I was waiting in line for a pay phone to call my gf. The conversation didn't end well and I needed a drink. I walked down the way to find out all of the restaurants were empty, despite the crowds in the building that numbered at least a couple thousand. So I went to sit.

An hour passed, and the new departure time came and went, no Memphis plane. It's now probably 10:30 local. At this point I started to notice something. There were several planes sitting at gates but no one was leaving, only a few arrivals. All the lines in front of Airtran desks were backing up. People were getting irate. Then, an airplane pulled into my departure gate. After a while, we finally boarded. It was late, almost midnight. I found my seat and waited. The plane was filled to the brim and getting hot. We sat for about 20mins before the gate agent announced our flight had now been cancelled. No explanation given. Took forever to get back off the plane. Things were becoming quite miserable.

Once back inside, people started going nuts, cursing and kicking stuff. The pay phones had lines a mile long, confrontations started. Then there were the smoke rooms. People were lined three deep and smoke was billowing out into the concourse. The fire alarms went off. It was turning into chaos. The fire department moved everybody to the other end, and prohibited any more smokers from entering the rooms. I finally got to a counter. The entire flight bank had been cancelled, why?..because the flight crews had been flying too many hours on line. Next flight to MEM was now scheduled for 8am.

I was stuck, no hotel vouchers. I called a friend in Norcross, his mom had him paged from a bar. I hitched a ride with a nice Mexican family to MARTA Doraville station. My friend was too drunk too drive, so his mom picked me up. We then hung out for a few hours at his parents house before I had to return to the airport.

Once back at Hartsfield, my flight was overbooked by 20+ pax. I made sure I got there early enough to befriend the Airtran employees. I also felt sorry for them. When I got on the plane, it occurred to me that we may crash, and everyone's life struggles would end. I knew it wasn't over, no, I had a mad woman's seat. She bitched me out when I wouldn't surrender it, despite her sob story. They removed her and we actually left the gate.

By the time we landed in Memphis, I had to be at work in two hours. I was 3 hours from home. By the end of the day, I'd been awake for around 35 hours.