Nerve Endings Firing Away

For our second wedding anniversary, we traveled to San Francisco for a quick 3-day visit. It turned out to be a day and half longer than we anticipated thanks to sheer incompetence of American Airlines. While our trip was exciting and fun, the travails of getting there and back ruin whatever good memories we have. Since we live in a small town (Bryan- College Station), we’ve to take connecting flights to Dallas or Houston to fly anywhere in the country. Usually we fly Continental, flying via Houston, does a decent job of keeping your itinerary intact. To our bad luck this time, we decided to try American Airlines since it was cheaper. Never again.

Although the weather was almost perfect, we were still delayed at Dallas by an hour on our way to San Francisco. We were told that the fog in San Francisco was to blame. That’s like blaming the July rains in Mumbai; I’m sure everyone knows it happens and you could plan for it. But the real test of our patience was on our way back. We checked in online the previous night from FedEx Kinkos located near our hotel and printed out our boarding passes so that we wouldn’t be delayed at the check-in counter or booth. We were aware that it was Christmas Eve and the crowds would be crazy. We reach the airport well ahead of time, pass through security, grab some breakfast and settle in near the departure gate. Ash checks her email to get a strange email from Expedia that our itinerary has changed. We briefly panic and rush to the counter at the gate. We’re told that since our flight from Dallas to College Station has been canceled due to inclement weather, we’ve been bumped off our first flight out of San Francisco and placed on standby. Also, we have been automatically booked on the 12:40pm flight…on the next day. WTF all around. Apparently, this last-minute flight change was done at 5:30am for our 7:30am flight so there was no way for us to know about it until we had reached the airport.

We soon realized that we weren’t alone in our misery as AA had bumped dozens of passengers who had connecting flights. After talking at length to the poor hassled lady at the counter, she booked us with the same itinerary for the next day while keeping us on standby for the next flights to Dallas. This still threw our plans into disarray as we had to frantically call Lucy’s boarding service to keep her for another day and reschedule another pickup date and time on Christmas Day. We could have taken the next available flight to Dallas (we were 9 & 10 on the standby list) but then the measly three hour drive from Dallas to College Station was still in limbo as all rental cars were booked up. We decided to consider our sunk costs and just head to the nearest hotel to cool our heels for the next 24 hours; all on our expense of course.

Thankfully, the next day, the flight left on time with us on board and we even landed in Dallas 15 minutes ahead of schedule. But then American Airlines wasn’t done displaying its incompetence. Our 35-minute flight to College Station was delayed by an hour. We were then shunted to four different gates within the span of an hour. The plane arrived but the crew was flying some other plane somewhere up north. The staff at the gate counter had to ultimately resort to “We don’t know when you’ll be flying”. At this time, we wished we had landed in Houston so at least we could’ve asked Ash’s parents to pick us up. Finally, one and half hours after our scheduled time, the crew appeared and we boarded the plane.

It took us nearly 36 hours since we checked out of our hotel in Union Square at San Francisco to the time we landed in College Station. I’ve reached India quicker. I can understand weather delays but the sheer incompetence and lack of communication on part of American Airlines was galling. We will pay more next time and fly airlines other than American Airlines. They may be cheap but then they make you aware of that fact every step of the way; after all you get what you pay for.

More on the San Francisco trip later. That was the good part.