Sunday, June 8, 2008


NO FLY ZONE....
..or big black hole

I hate to obsess about things, especially things that should be fairly simple. I don't subscribe to the Murphy's Law Club where if anything can go wrong it will. I am a Virgo detail person, and usually take every scenario into account when planning things like vacations.

Some of you might vaguely remember me mentioning a cruise I'm taking to Alaska in September. Aboard this ship.

The Sapphire Princess. With about ten eight friends from So CA. We are meeting in Seattle, then we will rent two vans and drive to Vancouver B.C., where we reserved three rooms for the night. We don't board the ship until 4:40 PM the next day so we can do a bit of sightseeing.

I booked this cruise back in December, and it was suggested by the cruise agent, at American Airlines, that I wait a while before booking my flights. With all the bruhaha with fuel prices, and the airlines charging extra for things like seats luggage, and the rumor that they might charge fat people more, I finally booked my flights on May 26th.


Remember me telling you about flying to Seattle from Texas, which requires changing planes in Dallas? And, remember me mentioning flying back to Orange County CA after the cruise? Good...just stay with me on this. I board my first flight on American Airlines out of the small regional airport where I live at 5:30 A.M., changing planes in Dallas, then on to Seattle.

The cruise ends in Whittier Alaska, docking at 12:30 A.M, The shuttle to the airport in Anchorage takes two hours, give or take. So I book a flight out at 7:30 A.M. on USAirways, changing planes in Phoenix, on to OC. This is what my vacation routing looks like.
On may 27th I email my flight info to one of my travel friends, who calls me and says, "they don't let you off the ship until morning" ......Holy mother of God!

Expedia booked me on two different airlines because that was the most economic package. I called Expedia right away and explained that I had to change my fights going home because I didn't bother to ask when we could leave the ship misunderstood the disembarkment rules. Well, this was going to cost me $150 from the airlines, and an additional $30 from Expedia....OR..I could call the airlines and change it myself and save $30. US Airways changes it for the next morning at 7:30...because that's all they had. When they emailed me my updated itinerary this is what my route looked like.

Somehow, USAirways, or Expedia, messed with my flights on American Airlines..which were fine!! Guess what? After calling Expedia every day since, nothing has changed. No one can tell me why they were messing with the leg of my trip that was OK from the beginning.

Things could be worse....my friends are booked on Alaska Airlines, and they filed for bankruptcy.

Tomorrow, I will call again! Then get drunk go to a matinee.

5 comments:

CGS said...

I hate the airlines. One Christmas I was trying to fly home from VA on the 23rd to TX. I ended up spending the night in SC or somewhere. The next morning (Christmas Eve) I was on standby to fly to St. Louis (yeah, you tell me how that makes sense), and I called US Airways (who I was flying with) and the recording said "Your wait time to talk to an actual human is...(I swear I'm not exaggerating) 120 minutes!" 2 hours!!! How freakin' ridiculous is that?

Karen said...

I feel your pain. I can't imagine what happen to your Dallas/Seattle flight, but I experience more and more weird routes, probably due to Hubs, which I don't understand entirely. I mean I flew from Boston to Chicago, then Miami. You would think going straight to Miami from Boston would save fuel and time. Go figure

Anonymous said...

It's going to be a long walk from Dallas to Seattle. Hope you get it worked out!

M said...

...I seem to be okay with Southwest...they let me change flight times with no charge. I hoep this all works out...sounds like a tough one!

Unknown said...

I agree with Marey, and I miss Southwest Airlines. Unfortunately they don't fly here. I miss all the cheap flights.