What is it about airlines that make them so suckky? I always seem to have issues when I fly. It doesn’t help that I am a Nervous Nellie when it comes to flying.
Let’s start with the first leg of my journey to Michigan. My mother was kind enough o buy my ticket home this year. So she forwarded me the e-mail that Northworst sent her. My flight was to leave LGA AT 6:30 AM. Now, I am not a morning person, but I was ok with that, as I would have the majority of the day in Michigan. I get to LGA around 4:30 and deiced to use curbside check in, because I have an e-ticket. I wait in that line till about 5:45, and I am still about 10 people back. The guy calls last call for 6:20 flights. So I speak up and say I have a 6:30 flight. He calls me up to the front. He looks up my information on the computer and says “Miss this is a Delta Flight.”
“No,” I tell him, “I booked it on NWA.com”
His reply was that sometimes they book people on other airlines (who knew); nowhere on my ticket does it say the flight is Delta. So I run as fast as I can with my luggage in tow to the Delta counter.
“Help, help,” I cry, “I have a 6:30 flight”
“Sorry Miss we just closed for 6:30 flights.”
So I explain my situation to him and he tells me I must rebook with Northworst since I bought the ticket with them. So I hang my head and walk over to the Northwest flight. While in line, I deiced to try and call NWA’s service line. They tell me there is nothing they can do for me that I must speak with an agent at the airport. I finally get to the front of the line and the agent won’t even give me the time of day. I try to show her the e-mail that they sent me so she could see the mistake for herself. She says it’, ready are you ready for this on “This is MSN’s fault. We always put it on your e-ticket when it’s another email. They must have deleted that information when it went though their system. So I ask to speak to her supervisor since she won’t rebook me. The supervisor yelled at me to go back to Delta to rebook. I tried explaining that since I made the reservation though NWA that they had to rebook me according to their 1-800 number. She then walked away from the counter. With little else to do I reluctantly walked back to Delta. At this point I couldn’t wait in another line. So I stood in the first class line so I would be called next.
I get up to the counter and explain the whole thing again. She explains that she can’t do anything for me. In defeat I begin to well up. She then takes another look and says even though it’s NWA’s responsibility she will do me a favor just this once and rebook me. She is my hero.
So I got to sit in LGA till almost 11:00.
Way you ask am I sharing this with you now? I should be at this moment in the Detroit airport during my layover. In stead I am at my parents house. I get to the Kalamazoo airport everything is fine. I am in the gate waiting to board. And they announce over the loud speaker in very mumbled low voice that this flight is cancelled because they are having mechanical difficulties. Now granted I would rather find that out before we leave, but still annoying no the less. So I once again get on the phone to NWA and at first he tells me that this plane is on time and will depart at 1:33. The time is 1:25 and we haven’t boarded yet, think about that guy. So I explain to him that they made an announcement over the PA and that the flight was cancelled. He put me on hold for what seemed like a really long time, and came back to tell me that I was correct the flight had been canceled. Then he asked the smartest question “Do you want to rebook?” So I finally rebook and get on a 7:30 flight, which gets me with a layover in Detroit back to LGA around midnight. I love traveling don’t you?
So the long and short of is it is, I was looking forward to going to SnB tonight, but I think I will be missing it.
I hope everyone had a great holiday season with a lot less travel stress.
