eburke's blog

« :( | Main | the big drive, day 1 »

August 4, 2003

no wonder united airlines is going bankrupt

i have arrived!  yay!  after a mere 17 hours of door-to-door travel on saturday!

the day started out normally -- got up at 5:45, out the door at 6:15, picked up carmen's husband at 6:30 (we sold them our car).  got to oakland airport at 7:10 for my 8:22 flight.  no problem.  trade car for cash, sign over the title, get my stuff, i'm ready to go.

the airport was jammed.  unusual for oakland.  this is not a good sign.  skycap line was really long, so i looked inside.  even longer.  ok, i'll opt for skycap.

40 minutes later, i get to the front of the line.  the skycap looks me up.  "i'm sorry, sir, i can't find you on the list."  "excuse me?  check again, sparky."  "no sir, you have to go inside."  argh.

inside, i put my stuff in line and went to the front to see if i could get an agent to answer some questions for me while working with another customer.  luckily, i could.  even luckier, the guy she was working with had already missed his flight so he let me go ahead.  sweet.  she could not find my reservation either.  so, what's my recourse?  buy a ticket at today's price, she says.  and btw, you won't make the 8:22 anyway.  huh?!?!?!  ok, look, i just have to get home, so i'll call customer relations and figure it out later.  she booked me on the 12:00 pm flight out of san fran for a mere $828.00.  ugh.  i ask which shuttle to SFO she is going to put me on.  she looked at me like i was crazy.  "why would united pay for you to get to SFO?"  um, because you're the peope who f***ed up in the first place.  DUH!  (i got the voucher eventually.)

ok, fine -- at least i have a ticket.  hop the shuttle to SFO, have 3 hours to kill.  let's check the monitor.  oh, make that 4.5 hours now.  ok, whatever, just get me on the plane.  six hours after arriving in oakland, i am finally on a plane to chicago.

arriving in chicago i find that i did not miss my connection because it was delayed, too.  great, let's walk over to the other terminal (which, for those of you who have never been to o'hare, is roughly in nebraska) and get on the plane.  if only it were that simple...

arriving at gate F1 i find that there are about 4 flights going out of that gate and about 500 passengers waiting.  hmmm, this is not good.  they keep feeding us lame, vague information like, "we will board 'soon'."  this is not helpful.  (it is especially ironic to a geek like me that in computer-land F1 means "help" and i am not getting any from these morons.)

i thought MY day was bad until i talked to one guy who started in auckland, new zealand over 24 hours earlier.  then he had to drive to jackson, MI from DTW (1.5 hours) after we arrived.

at 10:25 CDT we board.  i arrive home at 2 AM EDT after 17 hours.  argh.

Posted by eburke at August 4, 2003 10:39 AM

Comments

Post a Comment