Everyone always complains about air travel. But you know something? Sometimes it works out just fine.
Remember my tale of the nice twitter assistant at Delta? Our flight to San Diego was just swell. Sure, tight quarters because we were flying steerage, but there were TV screens on the backs of the seats which made the girlie swoon.
The day before we were to fly home, I duly checked in and got our boarding passes printed. We went to bed, setting the alarms for 5:00am because we had a 7:30-ish flight.
At 4:30am, my phone went off. I picked it up and fumbled around, thinking it was my alarm. When my husband said, but it's 4:30, I realized it had been a phone call, not the alarm at all, not that I needed an alarm anymore. My heart sank when I looked at the number and found that it was Delta calling. Without listening to the voice mail, I called them back. Cancelled. They'd cancelled our flight due to "equipment damage". The chipper person on the end of the line told me that we'd been rebooked at midday on a one-stop through someplace, and were due home at midnight. While my first thought was more time on the beach, I protested, isn't there anything else?
Yes. In fact, there was. The nice Delta person proceeded to book us onto a non-stop American Airlines flight at just about the same time the Delta flight would have left, meaning virtually no change in travel. Because she was from Delta, she couldn't do anything about seat assignments, and told us to work it out at the airport.
I stood on line to get boarding passes from a human, a very nice human who gave us three seats not together, but sent along a note to the gate and told me to talk to the gate agent. I was first in line at the gate, and sure enough, the gate agent gave us new boarding passes, three seats together in the last row, but he said I'll let you know if something changes. About 10 minutes later, he called my name - at the desk, he took my boarding passes, and handed me three new ones, three seats together in the eighth row.
It was lucky and awesome and efficient, and I'm kind of amazed it worked out as well as it did.
12 August 2011
Traveling
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5 comments:
Wow. It rarely works so well.
I went to Philly a few weeks ago. We got our boarding passes 24-hours ahead of time, and supposedly had seats together even beforehand, according to the travel agent who booked them.
We were 3 seats together, then 15 rows up 1 seat and 5 rows up another seat. The flight attendants ignored me when I had to ask 3 sets of people to switch so I could sit with my 7 year old. My husband was with the other two way back. There was no point in even trying to get near them.
I don't think I've ever had an experience like yours!
hold on to this memory, it may never come again! it's nice to have one happy airline story among all the complain-y ones.
i am so glad for you, and so glad you had fun in my town!
That is great. And a little unexpected. Normally Delta ... uh, they are challenged. Let's put it that way.
We fly them anyway, because does anyone have a choice on these things really, but ... wow. That's really really good.
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