This year for Thanksgiving I flew to Seattle where my Aunt and Uncle were hosting my parents. By design, my parents were unaware that I was going to be joining them. To make it a little more exciting, I haven't been with my parents for Thanksgiving since 1999 when I was in High School. It certainly took some doing, but the surprise element was successful, and it was pure joy the moment that I revealed myself to my Mom in particular.
I was, however, on the other end of a surprise too. About an hour before I left for the airport to fly up to Seattle, I printed out my itinerary from a flight reminder email (Does travel actually slip some people's minds?). It was at this time that I noticed my itinerary was a bit different than it had been when I bought the tickets. See if you can spot the error:
Wednesday:
SBA -> LAX
LAX -> SEA
Sunday:
LAX -> SBA
My return flight from Seattle to LA was missing! They did, however, still have my flight from LA to Santa Barbara. All I needed to do was get from Seattle to LA on my own... I started hoping that this was just an error in the email that was sent, and called up Orbitz, where I had purchased the tickets. The women on the phone was polite, and told me that she needed to call up American Airlines, where the ticket package was from. I soon envisioned that the following was going on:
Me - On hold with Orbitz.
Orbitz - On hold with American Airlines.
American Airlines - On hold with Alaska Airlines (the operator of the actual flight).
Alaska Airlines - Looking up the information.
Eventually they got back to me and informed me that my flight had been canceled. I thought that it was considerate of them not to trouble me with little details like that, nor automatically schedule me into another flight with the potential to conflict with my schedule. In any case they were helpful enough to inform me of the few options available on the day before Thanksgiving. The two choices closest to my original date were leaving Saturday morning, or Tuesday morning...
To those in Santa Barbara, see you on Tuesday.
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1 comment:
I really don't understand how it's legal for them to just drop our flights without warning or any sort of retribution, yet at times we can't cancel our flights without paying massive fees. I once tried to go on a Thanksgiving trip home only to find out at the ticket counter that my flight no longer existed. I was only able to participate in Thanksgiving by paying for an entirely different flight with a different carrier.
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