Skybus-ted

The weekend started out with a bit of a hassle. We rushed to the airport, through security to the shiny new Skybus gate where we discovered that the flight was an hour late getting in and therefore, we would be leaving about 90 minutes late. We had purchased our Skybus tickets for only $184 total for the three up us to fly to Wilmington DE and back again. The drive from Wilmington to my Dad’s house in NJ was only about 90 minutes, and with the tickets being so cheap, we could not pass up the opportunity. The plane finally arrived, we boarded, took off and landed in under 90 minutes.

A side note on the Wilmington DE airport, also known as the Newcastle Airport. When we landed and pulled into the only plane parking spot, I was surprised to see just how small this airport was. Dan put it best was he said, “It looks like a small elementary school.” From the runway side, the building is low to the ground, light beige brick, and small. There is one entrance into the waiting area, which is also the waiting area for rental cars. The luggage is dumped through a window and slides down onto a low, metal table. We waited for the luggage for almost 15 minutes, packed up the rental car, and drove to New Jersey.

We had a wonderful time with the New Jersey Baldwins. Bronwen got to know Popcorn, the giant Newfoundland. “Poppy” became Bronwen’s favorite word over the weekend. We played a lot of Wii, and Guitar Hero with my brothers and jumped on the trampoline a lot. On Sunday as we were getting ready to leave, I spoke with my dad about how great a time we’d had.

“We need to keep Skybus in business so that we can do this more often. For this kind of price, we could visit once a month,” I said.

“That would be great; but Chad mentioned something about the company having troubles. You should check the website before you leave,” replied my dad.

“Good idea.” I walked downstairs and borrowed the laptop from my brother. I googled Skybus and found an unusual number of links. As I started to scroll through the found sites, I realized that something was wrong. I clicked on the Skybus website only to find this. It was two hours later that I was finally off the computer. It took that long to figure out that the cheapest way home was to take the rental car and to drive all the way to North Carolina.

On the morning of April 7th, 12 hours after we were supposed to be home already, we left New Jersey in our little Ford Focus and drove the nine hours south. Arriving at the Greensboro airport we dropped off our rental and paid three times the amount of our original plane ticket for the car.