(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

I made it to San Francisco, by the by.

It took some doing. I got to LaGuardia with more than enough time to spare, but I checked in using the machine and found that my flight from New York was delayed to the point where it would be leaving only ten minutes before my connecting leg in Chicago. This was a problem necessitating an hour and a half wait in the line to go talk to a lady at the desk. While waiting on the line, I found out that storms in Dallas (my carrier's hub) were causing problems. And, apparently, mechanical failures were rampant; a lady standing next to me around the bend in the line had been trying to get to Miami from Newark since 9 am. I let her cut ahead (her rescheduling would have meant she'd miss the check-in otherwise), and she kindly gave me money for Wendy's for dinner after I got through the line. Sweet lady.

Not so sweet: the representative who told me I was proper fucked for making it to San Francisco. Also, I wasn't alone--I made friends with another girl making the same connection. Basically, the connecting flight was late, too, so there should be a slight chance we could make it, but she couldn't promise they would hold the flight for us or put us up in Chicago if we got stuck. When we wanted to know why they wouldn't hold the flight (at least six people were making the same connection as we discovered in Chicago), she said that if it were going anywhere after SF, that leg would be made late, too, which was Not Acceptable. I wanted to wring her neck--really, lady, where the F was a flight already not getting to SF until well after 11 pm going to go from SF when it was already an hour late? Nowhere, that's where.

We got on the plane--as we'd be on standby in New York or Chicago, closer to goal was preferable (oh yeah, other fun stuff: no flights available because it was a "holiday" weekend)--and my new friend and I spent the entire last half hour freaking the fuck out about whether we'd make it. The pilot kindly informed us that, yes, anyone missing connections would be housed at the airline's expense, and then we got gate info on our connection. We booked it, made it to the desk only to be told we'd been double-booked and therefore were obligated to take another flight because we were supposed to have missed the connection. No, actually, it was just the poor girl who got there before us, but they yelled at us for a while to sure make it seem like it.

So, despite the Mistress Negativity of LaGuardia, we did make it across the country, ultimately only 45 minutes later than expected. We didn't bother waiting for luggage, we went straight to the lost luggage desk to see about getting our luggage delivered. The guy had no record of a problem, told us to go and check the carousel, and if it wasn't there, to come back.

Ten minutes later, I was giggling hysterically. My bag MADE it to San Francisco. The stress of running like crazy and freaking out about missing spending Saturday with my sister and brother-in-law (who are both working and thus less available for hanging out during Monday and Tuesday) left me just a mess. My new best friend in the midst of disaster had a wedding to go to Saturday. Her bag made it, too (they were probably on an earlier flight; by the time ours left NY, the flight originally scheduled to leave later than ours had left twenty minutes before). We bonded, said farewell and good luck and went about our vacations.

Oh, and there's a baby here. It's cute. Luckily, as just about any excretion she makes is fairly hideous. And I'm more exhausted after one day spent watching her with help than I was trying to get out here in the first place.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Glad you and your luggage made it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's a good thing about the clothes. I could just go up the street and outfit myself in stuff from the thrift store, but why?

What did you end up doing that Friday (since I missed hanging out to fly)?

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Drinking wine, watching Boston Legal and crying a lot. In retrospect, I would not have been the best company.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Is everything okay? ::hugs::

(if not, you can always tell me off LJ if you prefer)

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Sounds like your experience is right in line with that report they put out yesterday. Yeah the airlines seem to be doing a great job at sucking, and getting better at sucking every day. Having been through the infamous Jet Blue meltdown I can honestly say "I feel your pain".

[shell524.livejournal.com]

The airline industry has a few problems that add up to suckage, but it's not entirely their fault.

Not a whole lot can be done about weather in a system that has been cut barebones on flights. They just don't have a whole lot of flexibility left. Yeah, they've added some flights back, but while travelers are almost back up to pre-9/11 levels, from what I understand, the airlines have not added flights back to pre-9/11 levels.

Even if they HAVE gone back to pre-9/11 levels on flights, the ATC system can only handle so many planes at any given time, and the government hates to give the FAA money to update those systems.

There's also the issue of only so many planes can be in any given airspace at any given time, especially around busy airports. Distances between craft have to be maintained based on craft type, altitude, and distance between craft using the runways. It's a nice fat logistical nightmare in any busy airport under the best of conditions. Add delays for any reason or weather conditions that force you to close a runway, and it only gets worse.

The airlines could handle things with their passengers better. Leaving hundreds of people on a taxi-way for hours on end is unacceptable, but the reason for that plane not being able to go where it was supposed to on time doesn't entirely rest on the airlines' shoulders.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's true, it's not always their fault. And I understood, I did, that the lady had been dealing with a hundred cranky people before me, but still.

There needs to be a certain rock bottom hit for the airline industry as a whole that means there's nothing we can do except fix it and good.

[shell524.livejournal.com]

Oh, no argument there. The delays and cancellations may not be their fault, but how poorly some of the airlines HANDLE it on the customer service side is completely their fault. As an example, when we were coming home from Dallas in January and United canceled our flight, everyone had to go talk to the counter agents. Well, we stood in line for something like an hour, hour and a half, and when it was our turn next, the check-in lady we were about to talk to disappeared and went on break, not to be replaced by someone else for almost 20 minutes. All the while, TWO check-in people were handling the FEW other passengers who WEREN'T on the canceled flights! Not very good crisis mitigation there.

I really do feel bad for the check-in people when this kind of stuff happens, though. First off, their staffing has been cut like crazy since the airlines started doing online and self check-in. Second, as you say, they then get to deal with an entire airplane full of people who are now frustrated, worried, and/or pissed off. PLUS they have to find ways to move all these people on other flights that are already nearly full or over-booked. Frustration all over the place.

We were fortunate back in January, that United was moving people to other airlines if necessary, so we were able to get a direct flight on American and get home at the same time as we were already scheduled to arrive.

We're flying on another holiday weekend this weekend, when we go to Dallas. Fortunately, we've minimized the trouble, and have no connecting flights and leave early in the day, so any hiccups shouldn't be TOO terrible to overcome.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The problem we had with the line was similar--there were maybe three agents working the line. The people employed by LaGuardia had the "brilliant" idea that if we formed two lines withing the barriers that would somehow make it go faster (the real reason, of course, was that the line was obscenely long and starting to cause gridlock elsewhere).

I do sympathize with the counter people. It's not fair they should be the whipping post for what isn't their fault. That said, grrr at that lady and her pessimism!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Aside from the crushing anxiety, I guess there wasn't any pain. Really, it did all work out. It just required sprinting through O'Hare and panicking for two and a half hours about whether or not this would work out.

I think you own the "worst airplane story ever" award for that mess with Jet Blue.

[shell524.livejournal.com]

This sounds a lot like our misadventures with United in January, only Chicago was the problem thanks to snow.

Yeah, this time of year the issue definitely shifts to D/FW because of spring thunderstorms. I'm just upset that I'm missing them! I LOVE North Texas and West Texas thunderstorms!!

Glad you made it out there and are having a good time. :)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I like thunderstorms fine, just not when they're interfering with travel.

Thanks for the well-wishes. I'll be sure to post lots of obnoxious pictures like the crazy aunt ought. When I get home, that is.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

What this country needs is a good high-speed rail network. I heard they're working on trains that go through air-evacuated tubes, so that there's no air resistance of any kind, that could potentially go faster than planes.

That'd be so amazing.

But yeah, airline service has just been sucking worse and worse lately...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

::does Fry voice::

WOOOO HOOOO HOOO!!!!! ::gets shot out of tube into wall::

Hee, that would be awesome. And I'm convinced that, major problems aside, a lot of the unpleasantness of flying is doing so from New York airports which are pretty universally awful. I should try flying out of Newark. I doubt it could be that much longer a ride to get to that JFK and it's certainly more reliable than LaGuardia's proven to be. Leaving San Francisco was surpassingly pleasanter (with the exception of not enough eateries in their terminals).

High-speed rail would just about put the nail in the coffin of the airline industry, and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I'd probably only miss flying for the adventure of it. Everything else I could do with out.