Christmas Travel Fun

Going back several months now, my plan for this last Christmas was for Krisztina and I to fly to Cincinnati to see my family. The tickets were quite expensive ($550 per seat!) but, hey, it’s Christmas, so I can’t exactly cheap out. Pushed back one day, my expected 8 hours of travel ended up taking 16 and landing me right back in the city I had departed that morning. And all the while I got to enjoy the relaxing, spacious accommodations that define coach seating.

The “fun” started a couple weeks before departure when Krisztina and I had an irreconcilable disagreement. She cancelled the planned trip and I decide to go on it my own. On Thursday, Dec. 22—the day before I was scheduled to leave—some sort of Day After Tomorrow storm hit the midwest and I knew that I had no chance of getting to Cinci on Thursday. Continental allowed me to delay my travel plans by one day, and I enjoyed some time to myself before the trip.

On Friday, Dec. 24 everything seemed to be better. The weather had improved in the midwest and I was expecting some Skyline Chili in my belly before the end of the day. It was at that time that some sort of clusterfuck trifecta hit me square in the crotch:

1. CVG (the Cincinnati airport) ran out of that de-icing fluid needed to de-ice the planes and closed for the day.
2. More snow came in.
3. Comair—my carrier from IAH (Houston, my connecting city) to CVG—cancelled all flights on Friday afternoon due to an absolutely unforeseeable event: planes travelling from airport to airport.

The Houston airport was a soul grave for weary travellers. People were moping around that place like extras in a George Romero film. On the tram between the Delta and Continental terminals I met one poor bastard that had been in IAH for 55 hours and counting. So, when Delta offered to put me on standby for the last flight the next day I politely declined (“I hope you rot in the eighth circle of hell, you lying swine!”) and looked for a way home. Continental—my carrier from SJC to IAH—agreed to send me back home and I decided that a Christmas at home alone was better than a Christmas in an airport alone. 16 hour later, I ended up where I started.

Let’s pause for a moment and discuss the notion of services rendered. I had bought my tickets from Continental and my original itinerary (Thursday’s itinerary, that is!) said that Continental would be flying me to CVG by way of IAH. When they pushed back my schedule by one day, the second leg, IAH to CVG, was somehow changed to Comair. Now, that was their decision, not mine. In my opinion, I paid Continental $1100 for two tickets and Continental to get me to my destination in a reasonable amount of time (even two days would have been acceptable). They were unable to do this and therefore unable to render services for which I paid. As such, they should refund my money, right?

The kind folk that I spoke to at Continental disagreed (“Mr. Drummonds, you can kiss my ass over the right pocket, where we’re holding your money.”) and many long arguments later I left dejected. Not so dejected that I didn’t call my Visa and dispute the payment, you undersand, but morally deflated from not having been able to give someone their comeuppance.

Let’s get back to the travel issues. I was forced to check one bag at the ticket desk before getting on the plane in SJC. As much as I hate checking bags, I absolutely had to check one bag because I was carrying my backpack and a case of wine. (I’m not even going to get into the story of the three Continental representatives who told me I could carry a case of wine on the plane and the one at the gate that absolutely would not let me do it until the pilot himself intervened.) When I decided to turn back to SJC only half-way to my destination, my luggage was not afforded the same choice.

So, see the C.T. (clusterfuck trifecta) above and remember how bad things were for the airlines. Delta, who had my bag in Cincinnati, was so swamped with phone calls that for two weeks I couldn’t even get on hold for any of their support phone numbers. Only on Monday, Jan. 10 was I able to talk to my first real human being. Just getting ahold of a human put a smile on my face and you can guess how long that mood lasted when I heard the news, “We have no record of your bag whatsoever.”

Ultimately, it took me several more days of bitching (and believe me those Continental customer service representatives are unfazed by a persuasive—read: angry—argument) until they agreed to do a trace of their warehouse to find the bag. Several days after that, the bag was delivered to my home in Mountain View.

At this point I have my bags back so I’m starting to feel like this was a zero-sum game. That is, zero-sum if you’re happy paying $1100 for getting absolutely fucking nowhere and losing a whole day of your life. But, hey, the airlines are all about lowering your expectations and in that sense they succeeded marvelously.