I have to say that as gas prices went up and airlines tacked on the fees we all said that sucks but worked through it. Now with Northwest and Delta combining forces, and the latest merger of United with Continental... which was the last airline to serve meals with their standard tickets, I have become increasing disappointed with the performance of the airlines.
When I was out in Pennsylvania in March I realized I planned poorly and had opted to fly home early in the day rather than staying for the conference debrief. So the evening before my flight I called to see if I could push back to a later flight. There was room on the flight but to change there would be a $150 fee plus the cost of the difference in price of the tickets form the day they were originally purchased to it would have cost me around $700 to change my flight. The airline employee told i could call three hours before the later flight and they wouldn't charge me to change if there were still seats available. The only flaw with that logic is I would already be on a plane back to Iowa by then.
But with my weekend trip to Long Beach for meeting on the horizon I was prepared to fly again. So to make my trip more family friendly on they way out I left in the afternoon and since I was only to be traveling part of three days I packed a backpack sized suitcase for clothes, and my laptop backpack for everything else which should have left me with no checked bags.
Well because the airlines in their genius are charging for luggage everyone has slightly oversized rolling 'carry on' suitcases which take up all the space in the oversized bins so someone like me with two smaller bags still had to plane side check my clothes on three of the four flights.
To make things even more fun, because LAX is about the least modern major US airport I have been to (Des Moines is nicer) they don't have the facilities to give you back plane side checked luggage when you arrive there so you have to go to baggage claim.
So to end my story (or maybe begin it) on a bright note I am thankful the Denver airport is modern AND has free Wifi so my day today didn't suck as much as it could have. I got to LAX at 5:56 to catch my 7:30 flight to Denver and all went as planned until I got off the plane in Denver... I even had room for both backpacks inside the plane with me and got a nap after what was a short night.
That should have been a warning sign because I checked the displays upon arrival and my flight to Des Moines was delayed 2 hours so I had a four hour wait ahead of me. I wandered down to the first gate my flight out was assigned to and found out the plane was coming from Chicago. I am starting to run out of fingers to count how many times Chicago departing flights have flummoxed my travels when I don't even have a leg that takes me through Chicago.
So I am still in good spirits, and go find some lunch. Then I roam around looking for an available power outlet because they are in high demand in Denver. I found one to plug my rapidly dying phone into because I had spent a whole 15 minutes checking email, and sat down with my laptop to do some paperwork from the meetings I had just left since my laptop was fully charged.
After about an hour of that I wandered down to find my gate had changed and it was possible we would be departing later than anticipated.... super. So I do the loop again and find another power source and figure out they have free Wifi and entertain myself with catching up on email and chatting with friends who took pity on me after my cranky FB post.
So finally after 7 hours stuck in Denver i hear a call for boarding to Des Moines to our third assigned gate for all rows boarding immediately because they were able to round up a plane and crew from somewhere to actually take us to Des Moines.
So we all herd out to the tarmac.... yes the tarmac because the plane they had for us was quiet small, and yes i had to plan side check my laundry. We have an uneventful flight to Des Moines and then we get there and they tell us some more Great news.... only one gate and set of ground crew available because remember we were almost 5 hours late getting there so we had to wait for them to unload the plane in front of us while we sat on the runway long enough for me to type all of this with my two thumbs on my phone with several breaks for cramping.
So i finally arrive in the building at 8:15cst twelve hours after I got to LAX and five hours later than I was supposed to get there.... i haven't had anything to eat four hours... not even airplane pretzels because they don't give you those on United anymore. I take the bus to get my car and find out that my credit card is locked because of unusual usage (now you are probably thinking while you were just in LA and now you are in Iowa) but I did not use it while I was traveling and it turns out the credit card company is updating there system so they can't tell me why it won't work and it turns out as of today someone was using it that wasn't us.... I just love credit card fraud.
So my trip which was otherwise most wonderful and productive left me teary eyed in frustration while putting enough gas in the car using an alternative funding source so I could drive 45 minutes to Ames to arrive home at 9:35pm to finish this blog. So with this I leave you (thumb typos and all) with wishes that your future travel adventures may be less 'adventurous' than mine.
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