I love traveling, but don’t love the process of getting from point A to B. In late-November and the month of December, that is doubly true. My recent travel experience from Atlanta to Southern California really brought home for me why I hate traveling during this time of year so badly.
Things started out OK. We arrived at the Atlanta airport at 9am and our flight was scheduled to take off at 11:30. Getting through security was pretty painless, and we were at the gate by 9:30. The flight itself might have been a few minutes late, but nothing out of the ordinary. We boarded and made it to our seats. It was U.S. Air, which I hadn’t flown for a long time. The thing that did stand out to me was how old the plane looked. It actually still had ash trays in the arm rests of the seats!
Anyway, the plane moved fairly quickly and pulled out onto the tarmac. Once we got there, though, we completely stopped and didn’t go anywhere. The pilot made an announcement and said that there was an alarm that the mechanics wanted him to check, so he was running some tests. About 15 minutes later, he made an announcement saying he was going to go back to the gate so the mechanics could check the problem out themselves. Once we made it to the gate, the pilot kept making announcements saying that the mechanics were tracking down the problem, that the problem was very minor, and that the only thing holding us up were some minor paperwork things. He made these announcements about every 15 or 20 minutes. After nearly 3 hours, he said that people could leave the plane if they wanted, but if they did and we were given clearance to take off, then those people might get left behind. He said he would give us an ultimate determination about whether or not the flight would make it within 10 minutes. As he was making this announcement, we saw that two guys were at the side of the plane removing all the baggage! The pilot was just stalling us for time. Sure enough, 15 minutes later we were given an announcement that the flight was canceled and that we should wait in line to talk to a U.S. Air agent to get a new flight.
By the time we got out of the plane, we were at the end of a very long line. I heard a guy giving out an 800 number to call for U.S. Air customer support, though, so I called that. I got a woman who sounded like she was Indian, but I guess could have been from somewhere else. I had a hard time understanding her accent, though, and I think she had a hard time understanding mine. She kept asking me where I was (“Atlanta! Your plane here broke down!”), if I was flexible on my departure airport (“NO!”), if I was flexible on my destination airport (“No!”) or if I was flexible on the date (Her: “I can get you on a U.S. Air flight for tomorrow”; Me: “NO!”). Despite all my emphatic “No’s,” I did try to be pretty polite. Even when she tried to book me on a flight into Denver where I was supposed to make a connection that would actually leave for SoCal BEFORE the flight from Atlanta arrived! Eventually, I got a flight on Delta that was a direct connection and that would leave at 7:45pm (Our original flight was supposed to leave at 11:30, to give you some perspective). We had gotten off the plane at around 2pm and my conversation with the agent had taken around an hour, so it was about 3pm at this point
I had asked the agent on the phone several times if we still needed to get anything from a U.S. Air agent before we went to Delta, and she said “No – just go to the Delta desk,” so that’s what we did. B.J. and I went from D-21 to the Delta desk at the A-gates. We waited in line at Delta’s help line for about 20 minutes, and when we finally got an agent, she said “Well, you have tickets, but they aren’t paid for – where’s your voucher?” “Voucher?” I said, “I had been told I didn’t need anything!” The Delta agent tried calling U.S. Air, but didn’t get anyone to pick up. She told us she was “sorry,” but we needed to go back to U.S. Air and get a voucher before they could issue us tickets.
At around 4pm, we were back at the U.S. Air desk at the D-terminal – the line wasn’t too bad this time, and we spoke to someone in around 10/15 minutes. This agent was helpful and printed something and told us to take it to a Delta agent in the same terminal (she pointed the station out to us). That Delta agent was really helpful and printed out the tickets AND voucher for each of us. We then headed back to A-terminal, where our new flight from Delta was scheduled to depart. We got food at the food court there, then headed out to the gate.
When we had been at the gate for a few minutes (sometime after 5pm), there was an announcement saying that the flight had been moved to the B-terminal — to a gate all the way at the end of the terminal. We made our way all the way down there, and literally when we walked up to that gate, they put up an announcement saying that the flight had been moved back to the A-terminal, to a gate one down from the one we had originally been at! There were some other people on the same flight who had trekked around with us, and they were grumbling along with us.
Finally we made it back to the gate and waited for the flight to begin boarding. The plane should not have been delayed, since it was originating out of Atlanta – but it actually was delayed 1.5 hours. Apparently, the folks at Delta’s hanger had forgotten to prep the flight until it was scheduled to take off. So we had to wait for it to move from the hanger to the gate, and then get cleaned and security-swept. I half thought it wouldn’t actually take off, but it finally did – just 12 hours after we had first come to the airport!
The plane ride itself wasn’t bad. I was able to watch comedy central most of the way, and slept a little. I’m just glad it’s over, and hope our flight back to Atlanta less eventful!
