We were on the Island of Maui when airlines started going belly-up. First it was the expected demise of Aloha airlines. They had been trying to find a buyer for some time and were unsuccessful. They stopped flying about March 31st. Then on April 2nd. ATA went belly up. No warning. apparently their employees showed up for work and were surprised at being out of work. We had flown ATA from Oakland, California to Maui. the end of March and were booked to fly ATA from Maui to Oakland on the 9thof April. We called Southwest since we had booked through them for our flights from Pennsylvania to Oakland and then to Maui and complete return flights as well. We ended up waiting on the phone for about 90 min and having several conversations with the same person each time....(he said he was multitasking) he was able to find an acceptable flight to Salt Lake City and then to San Francisco and got us there about 12 hours later than we had planned. The San Francisco and Oakland airports are only about 1 hour apart. We had already planned to spend the day in San Francisco with friends and fly out on the 11th. so it was all good. Southwest booked our flights through Expedia and the first leg was on Delta and the second leg was on Sky West. There was only a 20 minute layover between flights but it was a planned and common connection. so we hustled to our next gate and got there as they were loading. They held the plane for about 5 min extra to load our baggage. the pilot explained the delay and added "I'm sure the people who own the baggage will be pleased when their baggage arrives WITH them" the best part of the whole thing is that SOUTHWEST PAID THE EXTRA AMOUNT TO FLY US OUT OF MAUI!!!! we got out at NO extra cost to us!!! Hooray for SOUTHWEST AIRLINES!!!!! There were people that booked directly through ATA that had to pay $1500-3000 to get off the island. Actually being stranded in Maui is not a bad thing
it's just hard to convince the boss that it's not MY fault is a little hard. I need to earn more money for the NEXT dive trip.