I'm supposed to be in Salt Lake City right now but instead I'm in Seattle. I hate traveling and the last 24 hours have been a complete disaster. Everyone was wondering why I wasn't looking forward to this trip and this is exactly why. I have the worst luck when traveling, though I suppose this time it was at least somewhat my fault.
So, I was supposed to fly to SaltI Lake City yesterday afternoon by way of Chicago. The flight was scheduled for 3:36pm and so I got to the airport a little bit after 2pm. Since my company was reimbursing me, I decided to park my car in long term parking instead of taking the T. Now if you've been to Logan in the past few years, you know that it's been under a lot of construction. The terminal B section of parking was all filled up so I ended up on one of the top floors where it said "C only". I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to get to the terminal B side of the parking garage. I was wrong. Since construction is going on in the middle of the garage it was incredibly diffilut to get to the other side. The conflicting signs didn't help either (half said to use level 3, the other half said level 4). No one who worked at the airprort had any clue on how to get there. Eventually I found someone who did and he directed me to terminal A which I walked through to get to terminal B. Anyways, what should have been maybe a 10 minute walk at first took me almost an hour.
When I got to the ticket counter I had a little more than a half an hour before my flight. I was told that I couldn't check my bags because I wasn't there 35 minutes in advance (I was 32 minutes) and that my seats had been already been given away (the receipt say I check in at 3:04 I believe), So, I was put on another flight to Salt Lake City, this time through Dallas. Unfortunately, they told me I'd have to fly stand-by once I got to Dallas because there were no available seats and they gave me a stand-by ticket.
When I got to Dallas, I quickly learned that there was no chance that I would ever get on the 8:40pm flight to Salt Lake City that they had put me on. The flight was overbooked by 10 people and even if I was at the top of the stand-by list (which I wasn't), 10 people would have to not show up before I could get on. To make things worse, every single flight the next day was overbooked by 10 people, as was every flight on Sunday. The first flight with an available seat was on Tuesday morning -- which is the day I was supposed to fly home. I had already resolved to sleeping in the Dallas airport but I did not want to spend the next 4 days there.
After the 8:40pm flight boarded and I was told to sit and wait by the less-than-friendly AA ticket agents, my luck began to change. I met a young couple who had been given a hotel voucher because they had been bumped off their flight to SLC. They didn't need it because they lived in Dallas so they asked the agent if they could transfer the voucher into my name. Of course they wouldn't let them, so they offered to drive me to the hotel and then check-in and then give me the key. In the meantime, they called up AA to find out where I was on the stand-by list (his mother worked for AA). I discovered that I wasn't, in fact, on the stand-by list at all and that my tickets had been inexplicably cancelled. The only way I could resolve it was to go to a ticket desk in person, and they were all closed by that time, so I just decided to go with them to the hotel and go to the ticket desk in the morning.
They drove me to the hotel and checked me in. They wouldn't even let me pay for the highway toll. I called my boss up and he told me that it didn't matter what I had to do - to just go ahead and purchase a new ticket, first class if I had to, to make it out to Salt Lake City. I went online from my hotel room and after chasing non-existent tickets on travelocity, orbitz, expedia, aa.com, and frontier airlines for a while, I finally found a one-way flight on Alaska Airlines from Dallas to Salt Lake City by way of Seattle for $650. Even though I wasn't paying I feel really bad about spending so much on a one-way flight. The flight was at 7am and it was nearly 1am, so I set my alarm for 5am and went to bed so I could get a few hours of sleep.
The next morning I checked in and went to go talk to American Airlines. They told the same thing that every other ticket agent had told me -- that if I was hold a "stand-by ticket" that I was on the stand-by list and that they'd call my name if there was room for me. I convinced the agent to look me up in the computer anyways, just to humor me. Sure enough, she found that I was not confirmed on any flight and that my tickets were canceled. I was pissed! She re-issued me a stand-by ticket and told me that I'd be put back on the list. (At the top of the list, she claimed, but I didn't believe her for a moment). It didn't matter anyways though, because I already had another flight on another airline. I know if this had happened to my boss he would have gotten them to give him free flight vouchers and everything, but I don't have that kind of personality and I've never had much luck with airlines. I think that AA did two things wrong. First, they gave away my seat when it was more than 30 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave (I have to look up the exact policy, though) and then they gave me a stand-by ticket but neglected to even put me on the stand-by list and instead cancelled my ticket, (including my return flight!)
So that is how I ended up in Seattle. My flight to Salt Lake City leaves in 2 1/2 hours and I'll get there at about 4pm. I'll have missed a day of skiing and cost the company an additional $650 but at least I won't be in an airport anymore. I've also come down with a cold and honestly, right now I'd just rather be in bed in Boston more than anything.
So, I was supposed to fly to SaltI Lake City yesterday afternoon by way of Chicago. The flight was scheduled for 3:36pm and so I got to the airport a little bit after 2pm. Since my company was reimbursing me, I decided to park my car in long term parking instead of taking the T. Now if you've been to Logan in the past few years, you know that it's been under a lot of construction. The terminal B section of parking was all filled up so I ended up on one of the top floors where it said "C only". I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to get to the terminal B side of the parking garage. I was wrong. Since construction is going on in the middle of the garage it was incredibly diffilut to get to the other side. The conflicting signs didn't help either (half said to use level 3, the other half said level 4). No one who worked at the airprort had any clue on how to get there. Eventually I found someone who did and he directed me to terminal A which I walked through to get to terminal B. Anyways, what should have been maybe a 10 minute walk at first took me almost an hour.
When I got to the ticket counter I had a little more than a half an hour before my flight. I was told that I couldn't check my bags because I wasn't there 35 minutes in advance (I was 32 minutes) and that my seats had been already been given away (the receipt say I check in at 3:04 I believe), So, I was put on another flight to Salt Lake City, this time through Dallas. Unfortunately, they told me I'd have to fly stand-by once I got to Dallas because there were no available seats and they gave me a stand-by ticket.
When I got to Dallas, I quickly learned that there was no chance that I would ever get on the 8:40pm flight to Salt Lake City that they had put me on. The flight was overbooked by 10 people and even if I was at the top of the stand-by list (which I wasn't), 10 people would have to not show up before I could get on. To make things worse, every single flight the next day was overbooked by 10 people, as was every flight on Sunday. The first flight with an available seat was on Tuesday morning -- which is the day I was supposed to fly home. I had already resolved to sleeping in the Dallas airport but I did not want to spend the next 4 days there.
After the 8:40pm flight boarded and I was told to sit and wait by the less-than-friendly AA ticket agents, my luck began to change. I met a young couple who had been given a hotel voucher because they had been bumped off their flight to SLC. They didn't need it because they lived in Dallas so they asked the agent if they could transfer the voucher into my name. Of course they wouldn't let them, so they offered to drive me to the hotel and then check-in and then give me the key. In the meantime, they called up AA to find out where I was on the stand-by list (his mother worked for AA). I discovered that I wasn't, in fact, on the stand-by list at all and that my tickets had been inexplicably cancelled. The only way I could resolve it was to go to a ticket desk in person, and they were all closed by that time, so I just decided to go with them to the hotel and go to the ticket desk in the morning.
They drove me to the hotel and checked me in. They wouldn't even let me pay for the highway toll. I called my boss up and he told me that it didn't matter what I had to do - to just go ahead and purchase a new ticket, first class if I had to, to make it out to Salt Lake City. I went online from my hotel room and after chasing non-existent tickets on travelocity, orbitz, expedia, aa.com, and frontier airlines for a while, I finally found a one-way flight on Alaska Airlines from Dallas to Salt Lake City by way of Seattle for $650. Even though I wasn't paying I feel really bad about spending so much on a one-way flight. The flight was at 7am and it was nearly 1am, so I set my alarm for 5am and went to bed so I could get a few hours of sleep.
The next morning I checked in and went to go talk to American Airlines. They told the same thing that every other ticket agent had told me -- that if I was hold a "stand-by ticket" that I was on the stand-by list and that they'd call my name if there was room for me. I convinced the agent to look me up in the computer anyways, just to humor me. Sure enough, she found that I was not confirmed on any flight and that my tickets were canceled. I was pissed! She re-issued me a stand-by ticket and told me that I'd be put back on the list. (At the top of the list, she claimed, but I didn't believe her for a moment). It didn't matter anyways though, because I already had another flight on another airline. I know if this had happened to my boss he would have gotten them to give him free flight vouchers and everything, but I don't have that kind of personality and I've never had much luck with airlines. I think that AA did two things wrong. First, they gave away my seat when it was more than 30 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave (I have to look up the exact policy, though) and then they gave me a stand-by ticket but neglected to even put me on the stand-by list and instead cancelled my ticket, (including my return flight!)
So that is how I ended up in Seattle. My flight to Salt Lake City leaves in 2 1/2 hours and I'll get there at about 4pm. I'll have missed a day of skiing and cost the company an additional $650 but at least I won't be in an airport anymore. I've also come down with a cold and honestly, right now I'd just rather be in bed in Boston more than anything.
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No, on the other hand I believe the story about not parking the car in a timely manner.
haha