You know how I do.
I may complain about traveling often and all of my flight problems but man sometimes it really is beautiful when you can just sit back and enjoy the ride:
(Photo taken on our JetBlue flight from RDU to JFK on Friday, June 4, 2010.)
I’m working on a real post for tomorrow. 2 of them in fact that I started but haven’t finished, so stay tuned.
I got halfway through a post on Monday about our canceled JetBlue flight back home from NY on Sunday but decided I’ve had enough of airplane drama posts for the moment. So long story short: Our 4:30pm flight was canceled at 10:30am, I missed the phone call/emails because I was having the BEST nap of my entire life, and by the time I woke up and saw we were canceled around 12:45pm, they couldn’t rebook us on any other flights. Whether or not this is because the other flights were sold out to begin with or what, I don’t know. JetBlue doesn’t work with any other airlines so it was either fly out Monday and get back at 2pm, rent a car and drive the 10 hours back to Raleigh or buy tickets on another airline yet again. Flying out Monday was out of the question. The owner of my company was coming in at 8:30am and it’s only two of us in the office on Mondays anyway. Plus, I’ve missed way too much work lately (funeral then LA) so I really can’t miss anymore. Renting a car was probably cheapest but the least desirable experience ever and on very little sleep, driving back was the devil. So we decided to take the JetBlue refund and go buy tickets on Southwest for the day. I think in the end when all is said and done, we’ll only be out about $300 which also kinda sucks given all of the other shit we owe money for (see previous posts if you really care), all of which is totally travel related. I’m just going to give a big UGH and then move on to the awesome news of the week.
Guess where I’m going sometime before the end of 2010, bitches:
That’s right! My sister Katelyn won an all expenses paid trip to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, FL!! She won 4 tickets - free hotel (Hard Rock Orlando woot), free airfare (do not comprehend), and 3-day passes to WWoHP and Universal Studios! She won it through a radio station contest, which is crazy. It’s also the second time she’s won something over the radio so now you all know the answer to “Why do you never have any luck, Colleen?” It’s because Katelyn got all of the luck in the family, lol.
Anyway, she’s taking me, Christie, and Jeremiah #2. Weekend is TBD. Hopefully Jay can maybe come to hang out though it’s going to be too expensive for him to come to both parks with us and if I’m flying anywhere, I have to make the assumption that I’m somehow going to end up in more debt. I’m so excited! I really thought it’d be years before I ever got to go to there. So YAY for something else to add onto 2010, the year of awesome!
P.S. I need a project. Now that the Lost Finale Party is over, I feel bored and useless again. Maybe I can organize something for Comic Con or something. I don’t know. I don’t do well with sitting still for long periods of time. I was thinking of writing some kind of book or something about my airline experiences but then I realize I’ve given them all away on my blog and who wants to hear someone bitch about how much LaGuardia sucks for the 30th straight page?
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who dreamed for months and months of going to LA for a big LOST finale party that her fiancee and his dad were hosting. She was so excited and she did her best to help out with whatever needed it. She planned it all out: outfits to wear, shoes to buy, etc. Joined a gym 7 months prior so she could start to get in better shape. Booked airline tickets and everything.
Then Delta Airlines messed all these plans up. Delta is a piece of shit airline. People should boycott Delta and Delta should go out of business. I hope someone from Delta Googles Delta and sees my very specific complaints against Delta. Delta is the worst airline to EVER exist. Delta’s planes are CONSTANTLY having “mechanical issues” and Delta’s customer service is the WORST customer service ever. If you’re reading this now because you typed “Delta reviews” or “Should I fly Delta?” into your search engine, I am going to strongly recommend that you do not ever book any flights on Delta. And if you do, just hope that you have nowhere important to be, be prepared to be delayed or canceled on some leg of your journey, and be prepared to deal with the absolute least helpful/non-caring customer service representatives you could possible imagine. I’m just saying.
Jay, Clif and I had plans to fly out to LAX from Raleigh last night, May 21. Our initial flight to Atlanta was delayed by 3 hours because of thunderstorms between Raleigh & Atlanta. Flights were still leaving Atlanta and we were going to miss our connecting flight. Everyone who had a connecting flight had to be rescheduled or face spending the night in the Atlanta Airport. Because I was having a fit at that point, Jay made the executive decision to get us on a flight to LA that connected in Memphis, TN & got into LAX at 11:30am. The flight left at 6:40am. We have been up since 5am, running on 4.5 hours of sleep.
We got on that flight with no problems out of Raleigh. About 40 minutes outside of Memphis, the captain announces that there is fog on the ground in Memphis. This wouldn’t be a problem, however, due to some in-flight equipment malfunctioning, we would not be able to land in the fog and had to make an immediate landing in Little Rock, AR. We get to Little Rock and find out that the issue is so bad that they had to have the manufacturer of the broken parts drive 3 hours to look at/fix it. As a result, they would bus us 2-3 hrs to Memphis and we could try to get a new flight out from there. No guarantees and we definitely would not have been in LA for a long time. We called the Delta customer service line that was provided to us. Did I mention that Delta has the worst customer service I’ve ever dealt with? I have had problems with flying Delta many, many times in the past and the customer service was always incredibly short, rude, and very unhelpful. The woman we spoke to was no exception. She was rude to Jay and did not care to even listen to what we had to say. She continually insisted that we were in Little Rock because of a “weather issue” and therefore “I cannot help you, there is nothing Delta can do for you. This is not Delta’s fault.” We told her over and over again that it was a mechanical issue. We begged her. We pleaded with her. We explained the situation. We asked her to put us on another carrier, that we would pay extra. We asked her to fly us into Burbank or San Diego or even Vegas & we would drive. She told us there was no mechanical issue and refused to look it up to verify we were not lying and maintained that it was not Delta’s fault so she couldn’t help us other than fly us back to an already heavily-delayed Atlanta (at 8am, mind you) and try to fly us out to Los Angeles later today.
Finally, a woman approached me saying she was able to get onto an American Eagle flight that would get her into LA at 3:25pm. I asked the woman on the phone if she could do that for me. Okay…at this point, I told her flat out that she had to do this for us. I told her “This IS a mechanical issue and it IS Delta’s fault. A woman here was just booked on an American Eagle flight and I’d like you to please do that for us.” She told me that because it was a weather issue (still not looking it up), she wasn’t going to put me on another airline, we were basically SOL. At this point, I had had it. She spoke 10 minutes on the phone to Jay & he had had enough of her attitude and passed her off to me, where I spent a good 10 minutes begging her to please help us. I told her at this point, “You are going to put us on the flight. The weather last night was out of Delta’s control but Delta messed up on this flight and I’ve explained to you the importance of us getting to LA.”
SHE HUNG UP ON ME.
Well, no, not quite hung up but rather transferred me to another department without warning, a department that didn’t even handle reservation issues. The woman there told me to just go downstairs to the ticket counter because she couldn’t help me at all. We did that. I went to talk to Delta and Jay went to see about American & Southwest. The woman at the Delta counter was nice - she gave me a packet of tissues because I was sobbing - but said she couldn’t help me. I asked for a refund and she said they’d have to cancel the entire trip, including Monday’s flight home. I couldn’t risk it at that moment since I missed 3 days of work last week for my aunt’s wake/funeral and I am missing Monday. Plus, Jay has his last day of a summer class he’s been taking on Tuesday.
I met Jay at the Southwest counter where the woman there was friendly and helpful, like most Southwest employees. Unlike Delta, Southwest always has such wonderful customer service. It’s a shame they don’t fly a lot of places and it’s never direct. She was able to score us 3 seats to LAX but we’d have to go through St. Louis and wouldn’t get into LA until 5:30pm. This was our only option at this point. $1,300 later, we had tickets.
So now I’m sitting in the St. Louis airport and I’m completely spent. I’m exhausted, I’m stressed, I’m achy, I look like crap, I need to shower and I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I really, really needed a day to myself after I got home from my aunt’s funeral. I knew I wasn’t going to get one until today, where I could unwind a little bit at the hotel, but now that’s shot to shit too. Tomorrow is going to be very busy. I was really counting on having time to regroup. Thanks to Delta, my trip went from 3 days in LA to less than 2 days. I am so upset and so disappointed. I had outfits all planned out and things I planned on doing and I have been looking forward to this trip for more than half a year. I hate Delta. I vowed to never fly them again back in 2008 but had to for Hawaii & the times worked out best for this trip. Remember I got delayed like 5 or 6 hours at LAX when I was going to Hawaii? That was because of Delta and another one of their planes that had some mechanical issues. If so many planes are seemingly falling apart, then Delta must be a very unsafe air carrier. Unsafe and unreliable.
I feel that Delta owes us a huge apology. Oh but no, wait. Nothing that ever happens with a messed up Delta flight is ever Delta’s fault. My bad.
Okay so I’m a week late but hey, it’s my birthday today and I’m determined to not do much at work today lol so, I figured I’d share a bit about the trip to Hawaii. Since it may get a little bit long, I’ll break it up into a few parts. Here’s part 1 and it’s going to be the most boring part, to be honest. But if you return within the next few days, I promise to have better tales of beach, drinking, and debauchery. And I’ll even throw in a little bit of Lost.
So I left Raleigh on Thursday morning on a 8:35am flight. My connection was at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport in Texas. Everything went smoothly except we landed early and they had no gate for us because other planes were delayed a bit going out because of the weather. It was a bit of a mad dash from my arrival gate to the next terminal and my departure gate, but I made it in time for the last boarding call. This flight was awesome because I had the entire row to myself and there were TVs on board. I slept a bit for each flight, which was also awesome since I got about 3 hours sleep on Wednesday night.
Got to LAX (or LA X just to keep in line with the Lost/dork theme of the weekend) early and had to change terminals from American Airlines to Delta. I got a bit confused because LA X is the devil. I was stumbling around all groggy because I had just woken up and was still exhausted but I managed to find the Delta terminal and went through security with no problem.
That was the last time that day that I had no problem with anything.
So I got there with about 1.5 hours until my flight was supposed to leave, which was 2:45pm. Althought it was like 1:15pm in California, my body thought it was 4:15pm and I had yet to eat that day. So I found a California Pizza Kitchen by my gate (which wasn’t difficult as every single thing there was a CPK) and stuffed my face with a tuna fish sandwich. Made my way to the gate, where lots of people were already waiting. Called my parents and grandparents to tell them I was all safe and sound and as I’m doing that, I hear an announcement that my flight is going to be delayed 20 minutes. “No problem,” I figured and I texted Jay and reasoned, “We’ll make up for that time in air and I’m sure it’ll all be fine.” Ha, yeah right.
After a little while, it becomes a 30 minute delay. Then a 45 minute delay. The attendants at the gate tell us that there’s an “in-air CPU problem” that they need to fix before we can fly over the water. Of course there is! So I’m at this point getting a little bit worked up but hey, 45 minutes will still get me into Hawaii by 7:15pm and that’s still dinner time so I guess it’s okay.
Then it becomes an additional hour delay. They fixed the problem but now they have to run all the engine tests and that’ll take up to an hour. We can’t be on board during those tests. Now I start to get upset. I won’t get into Hawaii until like 8:30pm at this point and I’m dead on my feet from lack of sleep. I tell Jay to just go and eat dinner without me. He refuses. I tell him he’s stupid. I hang up the phone and go back to freaking out.
So this brings us to about 3:45pm-ish right now. They tell us that we’re going to be delayed until at least 5pm. I go up to the gate attendants and one says the next flight out that she can get me on is at 5:55pm. I say that I don’t want to risk getting on a later flight if ours is scheduled for 5pm. She tells me go come back at 4:30, because that’s when there will be another update. Great. Oh and the best part? They gave us $10 food vouchers for our troubles that did not even work on cocktails. WTF? Don’t they realize that the way to calm angry people is to give them money to buy a friggin’ drink?
So I’ve been around the airplane-delay-block a few (dozen) times before. I know that when you get meal vouchers for a 2.5 hour delay, it means that you’re going to be there longer than 2.5 hours. I reacted accordingly, as I tend to do in life. So I head over to the California Pizza Kitchen again and do my best Jack Shephard impression, which included crying to my waitress over a double Jack Daniels & Diet Coke. Then I ordered a Garlic Chicken Pizza to go just for the sake of spending Delta’s money.
So I head back to the gate at like 4:20pm because I see a crowd has started to gather again. Our plane’s pilot was making an announcement that the engine check had found that there was a problem with a valve that controls cabin pressure. Our new estimated time of departure was 7pm PDT. I was on the phone with my mom at that point and totally bust into tears. I knew I was embarrassing myself but I was so tired and frustrated and all I wanted to do was get to Hawaii and go to sleep that I couldn’t help myself. I went up to the desk to ask them what my options were. The pilot had seen me all teary-eyed on the phone during his announcement that he came over to me to ask me if I were okay. “No, I’m not okay!” I cried at him. He ended up having them put me on the 5:55pm flight, which was incredibly nice of him. I apologized for the outburst profusely and thanked him even more.
I went over to my new gate and ended up eating the entire Garlic Chicken pizza by myself. Which, as you will learn in my Friday story, ended up being a somewhat good thing.
We took off on time at 5:55pm. My first flight, which was originally supposed to leave at 2:45pm, ended up leaving at 6:00pm. It took us 6 hrs 20 minutes hours to get to Hawaii from LA X. It was supposed to only take 5 hrs 45 minutes to get there. There must have been some bad winds or they were letting the other plane land first.
One final story: I ended up falling asleep on and off for about 4 hours of that flight. The other part of that flight, I was reading the first of the True Blood books, “Dead Until Dark.” When the plane landed and I got up to stretch before they let us off, I noticed that none other than Carrie Preston (wife of Michael Emerson) was sitting two rows behind me. Carrie Preston plays Arlene in the TV show True Blood (the red head who has been married a bunch of times). I just thought that was funny. Jay texted me that Michael Emerson was waiting at the airport so he wasn’t surprised that Carrie was on my flight. He said that he was hiding in the corner though so he and Clif did not disturb him.
At this point, it was like 10:15pm in Honolulu and my body felt like it was 3:15am. I was beat. After we got to the Halekulani hotel, I went out to dinner with Jay, Clif, Jack and Cyndi (Jay’s mom). I know I wasn’t much fun though. I could barely keep my eyes open and didn’t eat anything other than Jay’s pickle (That’s what she said, now shut up). Went to bed almost immediately upon getting back to the hotel.
Friday, however, is when the fun REALLY started…
Dear Delta,
Regards,
Colleen
I posted this on YuBlog.org but I wanted to repost it here for posterity and all that jazz.
So on Christmas Day 2009, a man who was on a government watch list (but not on a “no-fly” list) and brought to US officials’ attention just one month ago unsuccessfully attempted to ignited a “crotch bomb” on an international flight from Nigeria to Holland to Detriot, Michigan. If you haven’t been following, here’s the recap: This man had put an explosive chemical called pentaerythritol into a condom and then sewed that into his underwear. About 40 minutes before landing, the man went to use the restroom and 20 minutes later returned to his seat, pulled a blanket over himself and lit the explosive. I’d tell you the rest of the heroic stuff but I’ll save that for the movie. It had a happy ending though, trust me.
As a result of this latest attack, TSA (America’s Transportation Security Administration) has come out with a fun new set of rules to basically punish all of us innocent travelers. Yes, I say punish. Why? Because these new measure don’t so much protect us any more than before but just offer more restrictions. The new security measures include the following:
TSA just doesn’t get it. Neither does the government or President “I’m Too Busy Vacationing In Hawaii to Rush Back When There’s a Suspected Terrorist Attack” Obama. I half-jokingly said the other day, “I’m not sure that anyone making the rules even flies on airplanes regularly like us ‘common’ people do.”
These new rules feel like the gut reaction of a new parent who is at their wit’s end and just making up rules to deal with one situation instead of the overall problem. Here’s my response to each of these new regulations, corresponding to their listed number above:
I do have some suggestions on what can work to prevent or at least lessen the threat of an attack:
This is just all my humble opinion as someone who flies more than 15 times a year and has dealt with all the airline and airport hassles over the last 3 years that you can imagine [see here, here, or here for some examples]. Don’t continue to take away our privileges because we’ll stop flying as often. And when we stop flying so much, our economy will take another hit. And when that happens, then the terrorists have won.
Then again, maybe I’m just being whiny. Maybe sitting and talking to the person next to me for the last hour of my expensive flight isn’t such a bad thing, either. Perhaps I’ll end up sitting next to someone who wants to buy out nuDia.tv and YuBlog.org and then I can have enough money to buy my own private jet to fly on. Hey, it could happen.A Frequent Flyer’s Humble Advice to TSA
Okay, so let me start by saying that I do have a video we made during our travels to San Diego last night, but the Internet where we are right now is stolen borrowed and therefore, not strong enough for me to upload it yet. I’ll get it up though (that’s what she said). In the meantime, please accept this small token of entertainment. Southwest Airlines goes 3 seats across and since there were 4 of us traveling (Jay, myself, Jana, and Clif), Clif ended up sitting in the aisle seat for the row across from us. So we spent some time on the flight adding fun things to different pictures of Clif in a Perez Hilton-style. Jay saved some to us computer but I can only find one of them, but it’s funny enough. It’s from last year’s Comic Con:
Oh yeah and I got pulled aside while boarding the plane yesterday so they could test my BRAND NEW bottle of water (bought AFTER security within the airport terminal) for alcohol or whatever. Yeah. Hilarious, right? Meh.
This may be one of the greatest news stories ever. Or at least one of the best kind to read when you’re in a blah mood.
So apparently four pythons (Stimson’s Pythons for all you snake aficionados out there) got loose on a Quantas Airlines flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne, Australia. They were a total of twelve baby snakes being held in the plane’s cargo hold. Two flights were canceled as officials searched for the pythons and fumigated the aircraft, but none of the rogue snakes were found, either dead or alive.
Well, I guess if you’re going to have a canceled flight, four baby pythons running around is a pretty damn good reason. The snakes were small (6 inches long) and probably did end up getting killed in the fumigation, but can you imagine if a snake (for reals) dropped from the ceiling where the oxygen masks are or you reached for a SkyMall magazine and got a free pullout surprise? I hope no one brings their small pets on any Quantas flights for a while…
Here’s the final installment of my 3-part miniseries about experiences traveling to/from NY-NC.
I’m leaving to go to dinner and see a movie with Jay in a few minutes, but here’s a little update on my apparently not-dead airline curse. If you missed my story yesterday, I had a bit of a problem getting to Raleigh from LaGuardia Airport because there was a “mechanical problem” that was apparently undetected until they decided to do a maintenance check of my plane as we were boarding. We had to wait around, not knowing if we’d be able to leave NY or not, until they found us another plane to take us here.
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