Philadelphia story: She laughed, she cried, she got wise

AIR travel is an increasingly chancy business; I can’t have been the first to notice this. Even if you fulfill your end of the ever-renegotiated bargain -- get to the airport three ... wait, four hours early, wear slip-on shoes, have nothing suspicious in your carry-on bags -- something’s bound to go wrong.

Our recent family trip to Europe -- my husband, Richard; our children, Danny, 8, and Fiona, 6; and I -- ended in July so we missed the worldwide security gridlock caused by a foiled terrorist plot in London, but we managed to have a frustrating return trip nonetheless.

Flying from LAX to Amsterdam was a breeze; we got to the airport three hours early and were at the gate with 2 1/2 hours to kill. Our plane left on time, there was a lovely group of flight attendants, we got in early and the flight couldn’t have been easier. Flying home from Munich, with a connection in Philadelphia, looked to be just as simple.

Until we arrived in Philadelphia around 1 p.m., which we don’t plan on doing again. Ever. While we were waiting to take our baggage through customs, the friend who was to pick us up from the airport in Los Angeles called to say that, according to the airline’s website, our flight had been canceled. Not that anyone from the airline had bothered to call our home or two cellphones. I called the airline and learned that we had been automatically rebooked on a flight leaving, conveniently enough, at 6 the next morning, with a stop in Chicago.

This is not the sort of news that a pregnant mother of two wants to hear after something like 16 hours of travel. It seemed impossible to me that, at 2 p.m., they could not get us on a plane to Los Angeles.

The next six hours crawled by in a muggy blur of failed attempts to get on another flight, all of which were overbooked and conveniently located at opposite ends of the airport, which -- in the middle of a heat wave -- seemed to be suffering from a serious air-conditioning malfunction.

“But Mama,” Fiona said after we were told that there were two seats available on the final flight to L.A., “I don’t want to live in Philadelphia.”

At close to 9 p.m., we headed for the airport Ramada clutching our voucher and hard-won boarding passes for a flight the next afternoon. None of us had eaten in eight hours, and all of us had long since abandoned any hope of seeing home again; we were more interested in sheer survival. Oh, and did I mention that we had no change of clothing?

On our way to Europe, I had, packed a carry-on bag with enough clothes for a few days in case our luggage should get lost on route. But this time, because we were on our way home, I had chosen to travel light. Something I will never do again.

In fact, the experience has led to a whole new set of return travel rules.

* Always have a carry-on with a change of clothes and underwear for everyone. Include bathing suits. The Ramada had a pool that would have made the whole ordeal worthwhile for my kids except neither we nor the gift shop had suits.

* Accept your fate. Unless someone in an official position has said, in the presence of others, that you all have a Very Good Chance of flying stand-by, don’t bother. In retrospect, we should have cut our losses earlier, gone to the hotel, even rented a car and driven into Philly for a little sightseeing and a nice dinner rather than drag the kids all over the airport just to get home that day.

* Pack food. Real food, like sandwiches. The meals on our flight back had been inedible, and every place that sold food in the airport was packed (all those oversold flights). So everything was made worse by hunger and wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels.

* Don’t panic and don’t cry. I did both (I have the excuse of pregnancy) and neither helped. (It was notably odd the number of airline employees who can simply ignore a crying pregnant woman -- they must have special training.) It just made my kids feel weird and gave my husband one more thing to cope with. Kids don’t know that things are going wrong until you tell them. If you can, grit your teeth and make it another part of the “adventure.”

* Never expect to go back to work the day after your “planned” arrival. That way, work considerations won’t be adding to the stress of an unexpected layover.

* Don’t think of your vacation budget as being closed until you have actually walked in the door of your house. Having to spend an extra $100 in cab fare and food will not take years off your life, but obsessing about it as “wasted money” will.

* For some reason, it is easier to get nonstop flights to Europe than it is to get them back. Try hard to get a nonstop flight each way.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.

Kids on Board appears monthly.