Anybody travelling by air this vacation season?

[ewalling]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

The media has helped a people get payments. Amazing what negative publicity will do to have an airline (or any company) pay up when the specific situation hits the news. "It was all a misunderstanding".

I would like to think American Airlines will get it where it hurts for this inspired response to a crisis!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/new...out&li=BBnb7Kz

[Martz911]

My wife and I flew from Jacksonville, FL to Basel, Switzerland via Washington, D.C. and Munich, Germany on July 7th. On July 6th at 8 am, Lufthansa sent us an email that our flight from Munich to Basel was cancelled. It's a 50 minute flight, but we were eventually able to book another one that left later that same day - - 11 hours later. So our total trip time increased about 9 hours, but we and our luggage arrived . . . eventually. Lots of jet lag, however.

Coming home from Amsterdam to Jacksonville via Newark on July 22nd involved a two hour delay getting out of Amsterdam due to a passenger health issue on the inbound flight, but since we had a 4 hour layover scheduled in Newark, we made it home on time. Luggage, too. Plus, the onboard food across the Atlantic was actually good - - on United.

Moral(s) of the story: you probably will get to your destination and may even have your luggage arrive with you, but there will be delays for various reasons and a good amount of stress the whole time. And don't schedule a layover of less than 2.5 - 3 hours.

[Tahitijack]

If you plan a visit to the Hawaiian islands be ready for sticker shock. Hotel and rental car rates have bumped way up. Mid-grade rental cars are running over $100 a day. Was about $35 a day last year. There is some good news, 2021 and last year rental cars were hard to find. Not the case this year as agencies have been re-building their fleet.

[Cypress Knee]

I just returned from the MartinFest guitar-together in Nazareth, PA. Here is my story:

I knew that I wanted to attend this event once it was announced in February. I booked on Southwest and upgraded to the early-bird "A" list. The flight was San Diego to Denver to Philadelphia, and the reverse on the return.

I had many experiences with taking guitars on SWA and getting on the "Early Bird" list always meant that I would get on with plenty of space to put a guitar in an overhead bin.

My automated check-in came twenty-four hours before boarding and I was in the mid-B's. I called Southwest to find out what had happened as I should have been one of the first sixty passengers on board.

They changed their policy. So many people were upgrading to "Early Bird" status that they had adjusted their policy from "first-come, first served" to "highest fare gets highest priority". Since I had purchased five months in advance, I had one of the lowest fares and consequently one of the lowest positions in line. There was no way to upgrade.

So sixty people from A 1 to A 60 boarded. Then they asked families, active duty military, and so forth to board. There were only a 148 seats, so I started to get nervous. Fortunately on the way out there was plenty of empty bin space.

Thee was a glitch when a bin would not close and they had to call a mechanic. He came with a flashlight and screwdriver. He could not fix the problem. So they unloaded the bin and redistributed the luggage throughout the plane. The bin was then duct-tape shut. That took all of ten minutes. However, it took another forty-five minutes for him to file his report and the pilot to get permission to taxi out to take-off. It did not bother me because I had plenty of layover time in Denver, but some folks were clearly at high risk of missing their connecting flights.

At th layover in Denver I was concerned because even though the B section had worked at the origination point, I knew that there would be a number of passengers continuing on to PHL from wherever the flight had originated from. Fortunately, it worked out for me.

The return trip was almost a disaster, and some of it was my fault. I planned to leave the hotel at eight to get to Philadelphia by ten to catch a noon flight. First of all, the hotel was severely understaffed and there was no breakfast layout, not even coffee, at eight o'clock in the morning. So I hit the road hungry and uncaffeinated after staying up until two in the morning on the final night jam. I promptly hit rush hour traffic and crawled at ten miles and hour for miles. But I still got there with thirty minutes to spare before boarding began.

So, like the idiot I can be, I ordered a quick cup of coffee and breakfast. The food came fast enough, and I finished as I noticed the A group lining up. I gave the waitress my credit card and she vanished. Nervously I waited as I watched the B group, my group board. She finally came back as the last of the C group was boarding and I hustled down to the gate - the very last person in line.

They wanted to gatecheck my guitar as there would be no overhead bin room. I was OK with that as long as I could retrieve it when exiting the aircraft like they do with wheelchairs and baby strollers. I was informed that NO, it would be checked through to San Diego, and I could claim it there. I explained that it was a very rare instrument and I was very uncomfortable with the idea of baggage handlers playing shot-put heave in the baggage area. The flight attendants understood and actually created space in an overhead bin for the guitar. Whew!

But then, they did not have a seat for me. Every seat on the airplane was filled with a fellow traveler. They began asking people with infants if they had purchased a ticket for the child. If not, the child would ride in the parent's lap and I would have a seat. Th attendants kept telling me that there was a seat on the plane for me, they just needed to find out why every seat was filled since the flight was full but not over-sold. They finally found a Southwest employee sitting in a Row 2 Aisle seat without a ticket. He was dressed like a pilot but did not have any shoulder boards or epaulets on his uniform. They moved him into the cabin and seated me in the Row 2 Aisle seat.

So everything worked out. I was about the last person off the plane since I had to wait for almost everyone else to deplane before I could head back to the rear of the plane to retrieve my guitar. It was OK as I had a two hour layover in Denver.

That layover turned into a three-hour layover, but I didn't really care. I was A 60 on the final leg home and knew I was going to be able to find overhead bin space.

[raysachs]

On Sunday, I flew from Philly to Eugene, OR, via Phoenix, where I was supposed to have a five hour layover. Checked one bag. Both flights were stuffed to the gills. The Philly to Phoenix flight went very smoothly, leaving at 1:30 pm and getting to Phoenix at about 3:20 pm. The Phoenix to Eugene flight had an issue with the display for some of the flight controls, so they had mechanics in and around the plane figuring out if the problem with the actual controls or just the display.

Upshot was we left about 2 hours late and didn’t get to Eugene until 12:45 am, or 3:45 am on my body clock. My checked bag made it through just fine, but took quite a while to come down. My wife had flown out a few days earlier, so had gotten the rental car and checked into our Air B&B, so fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with a rental car or driving in that state of exhaustion. Still, by the time I got to bed, I’d been up nearly 24 hours. But I heard some real horror stories in the Phoenix airport from fellow travelers, and I have basically nothing to complain about. A two hour delay was a relatively small inconvenience.

We’ll head back to Philly a week from this Thursday. Hopefully it will go as well or better…

-Ray

[ewalling]

Heat, high costs, delays, swarms of people, discomfort ...

And that's just a trip to Publix!

[rllink]

My wife and I are frequent fliers. Delays and cancellations are not a new thing.. We used to fly from Des Moines to San Juan, PR several times a year and we've spent a few nights sleeping on the floor at the Atlanta airport because of weather cancellations. Our experience has been that flying cheap and showing up late attributes to a lot of the problems.

But people can be their own worst enemy. We were flying a leg from Minneapolis to Des Moines one time, an hour flight, and my wife and I were not seated together. The flight attendant asked the lady next to my wife if she would trade seats with me and she refused. It was no big deal at all for me but she was very rude to the attendant. Anyway we had to get off the plane for some maintenance issue. They estimated forty five minutes for repairs but told everyone to stay close because they would leave if it got fixed before that. When we got off, the lady warned the attendant not to get cute and try to pull a fast one on her with the seats and then left to go somewhere. Twenty minutes later we boarded. The lady was no where to be seen and the attendant wasn't about to make any effort to find her. She locked the coor, went down the isle checking seat belts and when she got to me she told me that there was a vacant seat next to my wife. I'm sure when the lady left behind told her story it was all the airline's fault and how crappy they are. But rudeness aside, if she had just stuck around and had a little patience she would have had nothing but a twenty minute delay.

[raysachs]

Originally Posted by raysachs

On Sunday, I flew from Philly to Eugene, OR...

We’ll head back to Philly Thursday (8/11). Hopefully it will go as well or better…

-Ray

Update - it didn't.

Was supposed to fly from Eugene to Phoenix Thursday at 5AM, then on to Philly to arrive by 4:30 or so. Got a notice the night before that the Eugene to Phoenix flight had been cancelled for no particular reason. Probably just short of staffing. So, our next best option, which frankly sounded pretty terrible, was leaving Eugene at 2pm, for Dallas, backtracking to LAS VEGAS, then flying redeye from Vegas to Philly to arrive Friday morning at 6:30. Went as planned as far as Dallas. Then approaching Vegas, the desert sky was just LIT with the kind of summer desert storm I knew all too well from growing up in Tucson. I told my wife we were not gonna be landing in Vegas.

We're circling and circling, then the turbulence starts getting GOOD, then suddenly we're going UP UP UP again and after a bit the pilot informs us we're not landing in Vegas, but going to Ontario (basically east LA) to refuel. We get there, and then the pilot announces that the crew had timed out, sorry, but you gotta deplane and get your bags and the airline will figure something out. So we do that, and then there's talk of a chartered bus ride to Vegas. Well, I didn't want to go to Vegas in the first place, so I said no way in hades we're getting on a freakin' bus. I get on the phone with AA - yeah, American is the airline that seems to be having the worst time these days. While my fellow passengers are lining up first for a bus, then another plane, which eventually became an actual bus back to Vegas, my wife and I were on the phone getting rebooked. We got an early morning flight from Ontario back to Dallas, then on to Philly to arrive about 5:30 pm. By now it's 1:30 AM so we're stuck in LA, farther from home than where we started that morning. Hungry - nothing substantial to eat all day. Exhausted, but no point in finding a hotel - we'd just have to be back at the airport in 3 hours or so. So we hunkered down with some folks who by then had become friends. Dozed a little bit, but basically pulled an all nighter.

Then, the next day (Friday, yesterday by now) it all went as smoothly as you could ever hope and we got home about 6pm, a day and change later than we we were supposed to. And found that all-nighters will kick your butt at age 63 in all kinds of ways they didn't used to. But by the time we got home, we were so tired, we fell asleep about 9pm (6 on our body clocks), slept until about 8 this morning, and I think we pretty much instantly adjusted to east coast time. So, I guess that's a small bright side to the whole misadventure. Now, 24 hours later, it all feels like no big deal. But when you're in the middle of a chaotic situation, exhausted and trying to improvise your way out out of it, it feels like it could get very very bad very very quickly if things don't start going right for you pretty soon. Fortunately, they did start going right and it all ended well. But the worst travel experience of my life, for sure...

-Ray

[tinnitus]

Mrs. Tinnitus and I book flights without stopovers whenever possible. Scheduling choices that way can be limited, and it can get pricey. But we hated the anxiety we felt a few times on late-running flights, thinking we might miss connections. I only missed one like that in half a century, but it was a HUGE hassle.

In situations where a straight-through flight is simply not available, we book flights with layovers of 120 minutes or more. Time to kill? No problem. We're avid walkers and people-watchers. While we put in a couple fast miles doing laps from one end of the terminal to the other, we scope out the most inviting-looking eateries to have a snack and a sparkling adult beverage or two.

She's flown twice since I last did - and chose to wear a mask on the plane even though they were not required.

[rllink]

We most always fly Delta and we always head for the Sky Lounge if we have to lay over for more than an hour and a half. If our flight gets delayed for any reason they inform us there right away. In the mean time we hit the buffet and have a couple drinks from the bar. I think we probably break even cost wise as there is no extra charge for food, drinks, and snacks in the Sky Lounge. It is much more comfortable as well with WiFi and charging stations at every seat. I also leave there with enough granola bars, cookies, bananas and bottles of water packed in my bag to see me through to the next stop.

I was supposed to have surgery this morning at 0600 but the surgeon was taking his daughter to college and his flight back got cancelled because of weather. He actually called me at home last evening around nine to deliver the news himself. I thought that was nice. His nurse called today and rescheduled me for next Tuesday.

[KevWind]

Not until April 2023 at long last going on fly fishing trip to the Bahamas (has been cancelled for two years because of covid)
Hopefully things will have settled down a bit in air travel by then

[tinnitus]

Planning a visit to Palm Desert in January. Gloating a bit because we'll use some banked miles and stay with friends in a borrowed condo. Food and rental car aside, the grand total for flights and lodging will come to $22!

Interesting bit of info that might apply to some here:

If you have a KTN (Known Traveler Number which allows you Precheck status at the airport), that will expire at some point. I was glad to learn that it can be renewed online, for the usual fee of course. And upon renewing, it adds all of the next 5 years on to start beyond your expiration date (so no penalty for early renewal). And you keep your same alphanumeric KTN code for future ticketing, etc. Sounds handy to me. We'll see.

[reeve21]

Originally Posted by tinnitus

Interesting bit of info that might apply to some here:

If you have a KTN (Known Traveler Number which allows you Precheck status at the airport), that will expire at some point. I was glad to learn that it can be renewed online, for the usual fee of course. And upon renewing, it adds all of the next 5 years on to start beyond your expiration date (so no penalty for early renewal). And you keep your same alphanumeric KTN code for future ticketing, etc. Sounds handy to me. We'll see.

Thanks for this, good to know. I tried, but they won't renew until you are within 6 months of expiration.

[tinnitus]

Originally Posted by reeve21

Thanks for this, good to know. I tried, but they won't renew until you are within 6 months of expiration.

That makes sense. I guess I already was when I called to ask.