“If you’re traveling this summer, you better hope that you don’t need help from an airline.” — Mac Schwerin, “Somehow, Airline Customer Service Is Getting Even Worse,” in The Atlantic.

And yet people wonder why I refuse to fly the unfriendly skies.

Last evening Herself and I — from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport and The Duck! City, respectively — were watching her scheduled departure time shift from 6:35 p.m. Minneapolis time to 8:13, then 10 … and finally right off the clock entirely. Mickey’s big hand gave us the finger. Canceled. Sorry ’bout that.

According to FlightAware, the Delta aircraft headed her way from Maine was delayed more than four hours before finally taking off just before 6 p.m. Duck! City time — whether it had been in Maine all that time is anybody’s guess, as is where it was actually headed once it left the Pine Tree State — and for a while there it was looking like she still had a chance of getting home by stupid-thirty Tuesday morning.

But nix. No wheels up for you, toots. Go stand in line with the other poor saps to learn nothing useful from a Delta agent. Word on the concourse was that all Delta flights for Tuesday were already full up, and there might not be a seat available until Thursday. Yikes, etc.

So I book her a room at the nearby Hilton Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport … after which she decides to rent a seat on a Southwest flight to The Duck! City via Phoenix leaving at 5:35 a.m.

This means being at the Minneapolis airport by 3:35 a.m. for check-in, so there’s no point in cabbing it to the Hilton for a $200 wash and brush-up and then heading right back to the airport for another beating.

So I go to cancel that room … only Hilton won’t let me do it online for some mysterious reason known only to the servo-bots running the Hilton website. So I have to call and speak to an actual human being. How 20th century of them.

Happily, the obsolete meat-things prove friendly, efficient and helpful — tip of the Mad Dog Rivendell cap to Alicia working the front desk in Minneapolis — and the room is canceled without penalty, leaving Herself at liberty to wander aimlessly through the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport dragging Old Pinkie, her battle-scarred, doughty rolling suitcase, which Delta did not send to Tierra del Fuego, Ukraine, or the Event Horizon in orbit around Neptune.

Now, some might say that looking to Southwest for salvation is like hailing a passing shark to take you from the Titanic to that iceberg over there. And I am one of them.

But at least those pirates finally got her and Old Pinkie off the deck and into the air. If only to Sky Harbor. Happily, they have Hiltons in Phoenix too.

• Editor’s note: Yes, I read about the weather nightmares, traffic-control problems, and the overheating cable at Ronnie Raygun Intergalactic Airport. Thousands of flights delayed or canceled. And like Mac Schwerin I appreciate the complexities of arranging air travel. (“Delta flies something like the population of Sacramento every day, on average.”) But still, you’d think Someone in Authority might empower the boots on the ground at the Delta counter to grab a hot mic and shout, “You’re all fucked!” rather than making their customers queue up to get the same message one at a time.