I’ve traveled a lot in my life. Thirty-eight years of going back and forth over the pond can make one a bit blasé about the process. Get the bus to San Fran (got my passport?), dump the bag, go through security, hang out, board the plane, fly and land in London about 10 or 11 hours later with an eight-hour time difference, reminding you of the value of coffee and a hot shower. So easy, right? Until it is not.
Meeting up with my about-oldest friend in the world in Chicago was an exciting prospect. I had never been to the city before and she came well-recommended. The flight from Monterey Airport to Chicago O’Hare via Phoenix was unremarkable, just how we like it. I must add an observation as to how much I enjoy flying out of a local airport that does not involve seven-lane highways and revolting traffic, and I admire the progress that has been made in expanding our formerly small regional airport!
The Monday I was leaving Chicago was quite a different story. The Chicago Marathon that Sunday had brought an additional 55,000 people to town along with their entourages. Everywhere seemed to be heaving with populace. My Uber driver to the airport smiled wryly as he did some sneaky overtaking on the hard shoulder and told me that it had been a great weekend for fares! The airport itself reminded me of London Heathrow when all the computers crashed. Oh, this was going to be fun.
Crawling through the bag drop at American Airlines reminded me of how dumb I was to check a bag for short visits. Everyone travels with wheelies these days and they seem to operate just fine through airports and on/off the planes. There doesn’t even seem to be the issue with liquids there used to be. Why would you pay the extra $45 to just bring home more stuff? I really must rectify my ways. Not this trip, apparently, but very soon. I laughed at myself for the nice puffy jacket I had brought along with me for those brisk days by Lake Michigan and never wore. That could travel in the suitcase. I would have no further use for it.
Fortunately, I suffer from an unusual, familial condition, which ensures that I am always extremely early to the airport, and I was glad of this condition as I made it to the gate through the madness and well in advance of my scheduled flight. Excellent. I would be home about 11 p.m.
My first clue should have been the initial delay announcement just before 5 p.m. One delay is normally acceptable in the modern world. They are still cleaning the cabin, checking the oil — that type of thing. Then we boarded — hooray — slightly off schedule, but not really. All in our seats with our seat belts on and ready to go. The Captain speaks. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” (a “sorry” is never a good thing when it starts off a sentence) “but we have to disembark the plane. The plane is broken.” Perhaps the “broken” word gives the passengers the acceptance of finality, the feeling of relief that the “broken” aspect had not been discovered when they were up at 35,000 feet in that flimsy tube? We disembarked. I was going to miss my Phoenix connection. Things were rapidly cascading downhill in the travel leagues.
We are steered towards American Airline Customer Service, where we find there is only one lonely lady at the desk with lots of irritated passengers before her, wondering how on earth they were getting home that night. Eventually we are issued a $12 dinner voucher to tide us over. Hmm, that can buy you almost exactly a bag of chips and a bottled water in the airport. Don’t fill up all at once! Having severely underestimated the traffic that day, the airport was running out of food at this point and restaurants were barricading their entrances. Oh, dear me. That rubbery turkey sandwich on the other side of check-in was looking really delicious right about now.
I perched up at the bar next to a fellow Brit who had run the marathon and was hobbling around like a lot of others and topping up his alcohol levels. “It’s a cluster, isn’t it!” he said, not even by way of a question. I smiled wanly and waited for our unbroken plane to show up on the departures board. “It’s nice to see some Brits over here,” I remarked. “Not very common these days.” “Oh yeah, who wants to come to this nut house, unless you’re a nut job runner!” He replied, laughing at himself.
Back to the gate. “There is another plane coming in to take you to Phoenix,” the tired lady at the gate announces. Oh goody. I might still squeeze onto the last flight to Monterey that night. (C’mon airplane gods, get your act together! This girl needs to go home!) “It’s on its way!” (Fabulous.) “It will be collecting your luggage from the broken plane.” (Excellent, I was wondering where that was.) Boarding? Check. Connection the other end? (Might still possibly make it.) On board. Lights, action! Here we go! Nope. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen!” (No, not the sorry thing again.) Yes, you guessed it. Another broken plane. How many broken planes does this airline have in its fleet; frighteningly, rather a lot, it seems.
“But don’t worry,” says another very tired lady at the American desk. (It’s now about 10 p.m. and we are all losing hope, not just our connections.) “There is another flight coming.” I had established from another long line at the Customer Service desk that they would put us up overnight in Phoenix if we’d missed our connections. Oh well. I wish I’d had a proper dinner while there was still food at O’Hare. I now wished I had also kept my jacket with me, because it was getting a little chilly. “Here’s another $12 food and drink voucher!” (That will buy you absolutely nothing because there’s near nothing left in the airport!) The flight was pushed out again with the excuses getting more and more lame.
At 1 a.m., they announced that the flight crew had timed out and the flight was rescheduled for 7 a.m. the next morning. If we’d like a room for what was left of the night, we could get in the very long line of people waiting for they had forgotten what they were in line for. What was the point of that? You’ll get to the assigned hotel at 3 a.m. and need to get back at the gate for 5:30 a.m.? A group of us just fell to the floor on top of our luggage and gave up participating in this day. Unfortunately for us, the airport A/C was cranked all night and many of us had our jackets stashed in our luggage.
There was yet another delay in the morning and then another at Phoenix, but I was completely numb to all of it at this point. I established that any reparations that might be due could be applied for through aa.com/refund, but I was so tired and coughing as if again sick that I just wanted to get home and into a hot shower and bed.
As we disembarked into the sunshine of Monterey airport, I had a large cloud of doubt fall out of my brain that, after all that chaos, was there any chance at all that my luggage had also made it? Long story short — the baggage gods had aligned for that one favor and my bag smiled at me as I lugged her off the carousel. The refund gods were not so kind. Apparently if you accept a flight from American that takes you to your destination, however long it takes, then no refund is due. Even if you could have flown to England and back in the time it took you to get from Chicago to Monterey, oh well.
I received an email from American Airlines Customer Service advising that, because of the inconvenience caused, if I would like to apply for their credit card, they would issue a few thousand miles of flying points immediately to my account. Oh my, how tempting.
Columnist Lucy Jensen may be reached at lu*************@***il.com.
