It's been a week since I got back from the States. Yes, you read it right. The US of A. Yes, again. The usual balik kampung excuse ;) I was contemplating whether I should even go through all the trouble and write about my trip, but I've been reminded that this blog acts as my personal journal as well. I do go back and read the past postings from time to time to reminisce and/or obtain certain information. And it is always nice to share with others (even though I know I'm not the average writer out there let alone the best). I know for one, I used Sila's blog as one of my many references for my Seattle itinerary. The 3 weeks came and went by in a hurry, so in a way, I could somehow relive the moment while writing about them.
This post is merely an introduction. I'm using this avenue to vent on some slight frustration. I'll get to that in a second. I hope I could get to the next post and the one after that and the one after that one ... in a timely manner.
My flight to JFK via Dubai was pretty uneventful. The only problem with it is that the whole eat-watch movies-sleep-eat-watch movies-sleep routine did not go by quickly enough. Once I had cleared immigration and customs, I took the Airporter shuttle to La Guardia to catch a 2-hour flight to Dayton.
With 3 hours to go, I checked in and headed to the designated gate. I couldn't check myself in at the kiosk so it prompted me to be in line and see an agent. The lady did have a slight problem checking myself in. A couple of times she asked me to verify my date of birth and she asked me if it has ever happened to me before. Well lady, if you had been kind enough to tell me what the actual problem was, perhaps I could give you a more precise answer. After she got on the phone, I guess things had sorted out because I was finally issued a boarding pass.
I bought some light snack and settled down at one corner of the airport gate. An hour into reading the Mockingjay, I decided to check the tv monitors to check on my flight. Just for the fun of it. To my horror, I saw a yellow-colored "Cancelled" word in the status column. The heck?! I went to see one of the American Airlines agents and she informed me I was rebooked on another flight to Dayton due to the cancellation. 8:30am the next day! I asked for any earlier flights, any compensations, anything they could help me because it had already been a long day and I didn't want it to drag on to another day. A male AA personnel by her side even quipped 'there's always the seats', referrring to those in the terminal. Oh my God, that made me so ticked off. The AA female agent said there was so much she could do on her terminal's computer so I had to go back to the checkin counters, passing by the TSA security area that I had gone through to get to the gate. I also had the question of my checked luggage whereabouts playing in my mind. Siot tul! You really don't want to lose your bag at the start of your vacation.
At the check-in counter, I pretty much pleaded to the AA agent asking her for any help she could offer me. I didn't care so much how long it'd take me to get to Dayton. All I wanted was to get on a damn plane on the same day. Was that too much to ask? I've watched a good number of Amazing Race episodes so I know the airlines have the resources to do something about it. I was throwing out all these ideas to her while she was typing away on her keyboard -- I could also fly out of JFK instead of LGA. Cincinnati (CVG) is also another viable option. Another airlines perhaps? And so forth.
The lady finally managed to get a breakthrough and got me a seat on a 3:40pm flight to Dayton, via Dallas. ETA should be some time after 11pm. It wasn't ideal but I was totally fine with it. That was a more appealing option than being stuck in La Guardia for the night. When I asked her about my luggage, she made a call to the baggage department staff and informed them to locate and tag it with the new flight information. All should be just fine. Fingers crossed.
So now I have to attend to another problem -- let Sila and Vin know. I didn't enable roaming, so my cell phone couldn't camp onto any network. Hence I couldn't send a simple text. Not knowing whether 1-800-COLLECT still works or not, I went to one of the shops to get a calling card. The girl behind the counter was so thoughtful that she also gave me some change in quarters in case I need to use the public phones. Nak jadikan cerita, my calls didn't get through and I got the machine. I really hope Sila got my voice messages.
Half an hour before departure, the boarding process started. I got in line when all Zone 1 passengers were paged. When I handed my boarding pass to the agent for it to be scanned, the machine flashed a red warning light. Oh what now? They made me stand aside and keyed in my booking number into the computer. It showed no trace of information that I was supposed to be on that flight. WTF! Instead it showed that I was still booked on the 8:30am flight on the following day to Dayton. But, but... I was issued boarding passes. And I had cleared the TSA security checks. How was that even possible? But somehow the AA system indicated otherwise, and the fact that it was a full flight and there was already a long standby list, I couldn't get on that freaking plane. Arrgghh!
And to add insult to injury, the AA agent just printed out my 8:30am boarding pass and handed me a small piece of paper with a toll free number for any cases of delay and cancellation. Morale was at all time low and frustration flew to the roof. Especially when I have all those rosy ideas and feelings that the companies in the great US of A have a great customer service and will go all out for their customers. So what ever happened to that?
It was already 4pm. I had pretty much lost most if not all expectations in getting to Dayton at all tonight. Nonetheless, I still made a call to the AA hotline. Margaret answered my call and I once again pleaded my case. The next flight from JFK wouldn't give me enough time to get there. I asked her if it would be possible to get me on other (competing) airlines. She worked on her machine and saw that there was a Delta flight at 6:45pm that ought to get me there two hours later -- way ahead of the Dallas flight's 11pm ETA. I said yes to that without any hesitation. She put me on hold and contacted Delta. After a tense few minutes of waiting, she came back and told me that she managed to book me a seat. Oh thank you Margaret in Arizona.
I took the free bus to the Delta terminal, minus my bag. Margaret told me she placed it in the system for my bag to be transfered to Delta. I could only place my trust on her and hope that my luggage will arrive safely in Dayton. You'd think that was the end of the drama? Nope. Capital N-O! An hour before departure time, the monitor flashed "Delayed" and the flight was retimed to 9:30. With that came the responsibility to inform Sila. Oh man. Running low on calling card credit and quarters, it was a blessing that the Delta terminal is a brand new terminal and it's furnished with tons of iPads. Disregarding any security concerns, I logged on the internet, sent out emails and Hangout messages to Sila. Praying that at least one got through to Sila. I just didn't want them to wander about in the airport for me, not knowing when I'd get there. Especially when I had been booked on another flight. And a totally different airline.
8:30 came and my flight was then postponed another half hour. Another hour, my flight was again retimed to 10:20. Other flights at the gate came and went. Finally at 10, an announcement came and informed us that the plane was on a final approach to LGA. Yay! So to cut the story short -- I didn't know it would take this long to ramble about this. I guess "slight frustration" is an understatement. lol! -- our plane landed in Dayton at midnight and Sila was there waiting for me. She also had to check the flight status on the internet before leaving the house. Half an hour later, we arrived at the blue house. Oh what a day! What a day! AA should also reimburse Sila and Vin for the trouble they had to go through as well! Sila told me of Yaya's response when they informed her of my flight delay and that she could only meet me the next morning-- "Can I play with uncle Zarin tomorrow then?" :D
You guys want to know what happened to my bag? While waiting for my flight, I approached Delta personnel and asked them about my bag. Contrary to what Margaret had said, they told there was no working agreement between AA and Delta to handle the other airline's luggage. And funnily enough, they also had transferred their passengers over to AA on that day.
As I was heading to the baggage claim carousel, I passed by the AA left luggage office. I decided to take a peek and low and behold, I saw my bag there. Alhamdulillah (Thanks to the Almighty)! So my bag was in the LGA-DFW-DAY flights and got there before me. Crazy right?!
There you have it ladies and gentlemen. I believe I am done letting off steam. The AA agents never told me of the reason behind the flight cancellation. I guess that's that about flying American Airlines again. While waiting at the airport, I saw the weather channel showed some sort of crazy weather system in the Northeast. I could only put two and two together and blamed it on mother nature for all those delays and cancellation. Still, they could have handled it in much better manner... except for Margaret in Arizona of course.
And yes, it was so great to see Sila, Vin and the kids after all these years! More on that in the next post(s), insyaAllah.
This post is merely an introduction. I'm using this avenue to vent on some slight frustration. I'll get to that in a second. I hope I could get to the next post and the one after that and the one after that one ... in a timely manner.
My flight to JFK via Dubai was pretty uneventful. The only problem with it is that the whole eat-watch movies-sleep-eat-watch movies-sleep routine did not go by quickly enough. Once I had cleared immigration and customs, I took the Airporter shuttle to La Guardia to catch a 2-hour flight to Dayton.
With 3 hours to go, I checked in and headed to the designated gate. I couldn't check myself in at the kiosk so it prompted me to be in line and see an agent. The lady did have a slight problem checking myself in. A couple of times she asked me to verify my date of birth and she asked me if it has ever happened to me before. Well lady, if you had been kind enough to tell me what the actual problem was, perhaps I could give you a more precise answer. After she got on the phone, I guess things had sorted out because I was finally issued a boarding pass.
I bought some light snack and settled down at one corner of the airport gate. An hour into reading the Mockingjay, I decided to check the tv monitors to check on my flight. Just for the fun of it. To my horror, I saw a yellow-colored "Cancelled" word in the status column. The heck?! I went to see one of the American Airlines agents and she informed me I was rebooked on another flight to Dayton due to the cancellation. 8:30am the next day! I asked for any earlier flights, any compensations, anything they could help me because it had already been a long day and I didn't want it to drag on to another day. A male AA personnel by her side even quipped 'there's always the seats', referrring to those in the terminal. Oh my God, that made me so ticked off. The AA female agent said there was so much she could do on her terminal's computer so I had to go back to the checkin counters, passing by the TSA security area that I had gone through to get to the gate. I also had the question of my checked luggage whereabouts playing in my mind. Siot tul! You really don't want to lose your bag at the start of your vacation.
At the check-in counter, I pretty much pleaded to the AA agent asking her for any help she could offer me. I didn't care so much how long it'd take me to get to Dayton. All I wanted was to get on a damn plane on the same day. Was that too much to ask? I've watched a good number of Amazing Race episodes so I know the airlines have the resources to do something about it. I was throwing out all these ideas to her while she was typing away on her keyboard -- I could also fly out of JFK instead of LGA. Cincinnati (CVG) is also another viable option. Another airlines perhaps? And so forth.
The lady finally managed to get a breakthrough and got me a seat on a 3:40pm flight to Dayton, via Dallas. ETA should be some time after 11pm. It wasn't ideal but I was totally fine with it. That was a more appealing option than being stuck in La Guardia for the night. When I asked her about my luggage, she made a call to the baggage department staff and informed them to locate and tag it with the new flight information. All should be just fine. Fingers crossed.
So now I have to attend to another problem -- let Sila and Vin know. I didn't enable roaming, so my cell phone couldn't camp onto any network. Hence I couldn't send a simple text. Not knowing whether 1-800-COLLECT still works or not, I went to one of the shops to get a calling card. The girl behind the counter was so thoughtful that she also gave me some change in quarters in case I need to use the public phones. Nak jadikan cerita, my calls didn't get through and I got the machine. I really hope Sila got my voice messages.
Half an hour before departure, the boarding process started. I got in line when all Zone 1 passengers were paged. When I handed my boarding pass to the agent for it to be scanned, the machine flashed a red warning light. Oh what now? They made me stand aside and keyed in my booking number into the computer. It showed no trace of information that I was supposed to be on that flight. WTF! Instead it showed that I was still booked on the 8:30am flight on the following day to Dayton. But, but... I was issued boarding passes. And I had cleared the TSA security checks. How was that even possible? But somehow the AA system indicated otherwise, and the fact that it was a full flight and there was already a long standby list, I couldn't get on that freaking plane. Arrgghh!
And to add insult to injury, the AA agent just printed out my 8:30am boarding pass and handed me a small piece of paper with a toll free number for any cases of delay and cancellation. Morale was at all time low and frustration flew to the roof. Especially when I have all those rosy ideas and feelings that the companies in the great US of A have a great customer service and will go all out for their customers. So what ever happened to that?
It was already 4pm. I had pretty much lost most if not all expectations in getting to Dayton at all tonight. Nonetheless, I still made a call to the AA hotline. Margaret answered my call and I once again pleaded my case. The next flight from JFK wouldn't give me enough time to get there. I asked her if it would be possible to get me on other (competing) airlines. She worked on her machine and saw that there was a Delta flight at 6:45pm that ought to get me there two hours later -- way ahead of the Dallas flight's 11pm ETA. I said yes to that without any hesitation. She put me on hold and contacted Delta. After a tense few minutes of waiting, she came back and told me that she managed to book me a seat. Oh thank you Margaret in Arizona.
I took the free bus to the Delta terminal, minus my bag. Margaret told me she placed it in the system for my bag to be transfered to Delta. I could only place my trust on her and hope that my luggage will arrive safely in Dayton. You'd think that was the end of the drama? Nope. Capital N-O! An hour before departure time, the monitor flashed "Delayed" and the flight was retimed to 9:30. With that came the responsibility to inform Sila. Oh man. Running low on calling card credit and quarters, it was a blessing that the Delta terminal is a brand new terminal and it's furnished with tons of iPads. Disregarding any security concerns, I logged on the internet, sent out emails and Hangout messages to Sila. Praying that at least one got through to Sila. I just didn't want them to wander about in the airport for me, not knowing when I'd get there. Especially when I had been booked on another flight. And a totally different airline.
8:30 came and my flight was then postponed another half hour. Another hour, my flight was again retimed to 10:20. Other flights at the gate came and went. Finally at 10, an announcement came and informed us that the plane was on a final approach to LGA. Yay! So to cut the story short -- I didn't know it would take this long to ramble about this. I guess "slight frustration" is an understatement. lol! -- our plane landed in Dayton at midnight and Sila was there waiting for me. She also had to check the flight status on the internet before leaving the house. Half an hour later, we arrived at the blue house. Oh what a day! What a day! AA should also reimburse Sila and Vin for the trouble they had to go through as well! Sila told me of Yaya's response when they informed her of my flight delay and that she could only meet me the next morning-- "Can I play with uncle Zarin tomorrow then?" :D
 |
| There was a downpour as we boarded the plane. |
You guys want to know what happened to my bag? While waiting for my flight, I approached Delta personnel and asked them about my bag. Contrary to what Margaret had said, they told there was no working agreement between AA and Delta to handle the other airline's luggage. And funnily enough, they also had transferred their passengers over to AA on that day.
As I was heading to the baggage claim carousel, I passed by the AA left luggage office. I decided to take a peek and low and behold, I saw my bag there. Alhamdulillah (Thanks to the Almighty)! So my bag was in the LGA-DFW-DAY flights and got there before me. Crazy right?!
 |
| The phantom LGA-DFW-DAY boarding passes |
 |
| This is how they re-tagged my luggage |
And yes, it was so great to see Sila, Vin and the kids after all these years! More on that in the next post(s), insyaAllah.
so sorry there were so many delays and setbacks in getting from NYC to here, just happy you made it safely to the blue house. i say again, you could have driven here in the time it took for you to actually get here :P the kids miss their uncle zarin. jom skype soon!
ReplyDeleteyou guys pun kena tempias nya. good thing i was already in the states when it happened. yeah sure, we should try to skype this weekend then
Deletewelcome back. great horror story bro. now i'm scared to fly AA this summer.
ReplyDeletehaha, thanks RayMau. well, i do hope is just a one-off case. but these major airlines yang selalu nya buat hal dan banyak cikadak. like I wanted to book a flight on United and in the last page, Malaysia is not one of the countries listed in the billing address. So I couldn't purchase the ticket. AA was like that years ago.
Deletesafe trip Ray!
asyik g US jer.. :-p
ReplyDeleteBest wo gi US :) tapi tak la sampai "asyik". Hehe
Delete