brian's blog

Travelling back from Montreal yesterday really, really sucked. My whole goal was to make it back to Seattle by 7 o'clock or so, so I could attend the giant farewell party for the entire half of MSN Entertainment leaving the team.

Super short version:

• United somehow loses my reservation, and gave my seats away on sold-out flights
• After fighting, once re-booked, the flight leaves 1.5 hours late, and sits on the Chicago runway for a half hour, missing my Seattle connection
• United forces me to check my carry-on luggage, then mysteriously loses it -- and being a carry on, it's not tagged
• After fighting again to get a new flight out Saturday night (instead of the next day), my re-booked flight out of Chicago leaves very late, killing my last remaining hope of making it to the party
• I still have no clue where my luggage is today

Pardon me while I vent the full version - it's therapeutic:

• I get to the Montreal airport and find that my return flight reservation was cancelled on Thursday (after I had already arrived in Montreal) by a United agent. No explanation why - they claim someone called them to cancel it, and that my flights are now completely sold out.
• United says the soonest they can get me to Seattle is the next day, on Sunday. After an hour of arguing back and forth with United and with the help of Microsoft's travel agent, American Express, I finally get booked into the two flights I need to get to Seattle. (Why do they say a flight is completely sold out if it's not really completely sold out?)
• While we're on the walkway to the plane, we're told that the plane is too small for rolling suitcase carry-ons to fit in the overhead bin, so United wants to check them. I object, since my carry-on has fragile items, etc, but United insists that the bag will be treated & stored differently than checked baggage, and will be waiting on the airplane walkway immediately after we unload in Chicaco. So they tag the bag with a ticket, give me the other half of the ticket, and take it away.
• Our flight was late arriving to the Montreal gate, and is delayed leaving by an hour and a half. Pretty annoying, but I figure I should have 30 minutes left to catch my connection to Seattle once we land.
• Once we land in Chicaco, too many United planes are occupying the gates, so we wait on the runway for -- you guessed it -- 30 minutes. The flight attendant suggests using our cells to call the United reservation number to find out our connection statuses, and/or alternative options.
• While waiting on the runway, I call and find out that my connection to Seattle has left, and that United has re-booked me for another flight to Seattle the next morning. After arguing back and forth at length again with United without resolution, the Microsoft travel agent (these guys are awesome) reserves me on an American Airlines flight leaving Chicago to Seattle that night, which would get me into Seattle with enough time to still make a short appearance at the party. I still need United to change my current ticket to American, though. They do, which makes me angry that United never offered this option to me in the first place.
• After waiting on the runway, I finally get off the plane in Chicaco. My carry-on suitcase, and several other people's suitcases, never come out. The captain checks, the lead baggage handler checks, and none of them can find any trace of the special carry-on bags. They're not at the regular baggage carousel, they're not in Montreal (they called), they're nowhere. The best part about this is that the ticket they tagged my bag with is not keyed to me in any way. The ticket doesn't tell them anything - not where my bag is going, not whose bag it is. Nothing. What's the point? After searching fruitlessly for some time, I head over to my American flight.
• The American flight leaves an hour late, held back because its flight crew hasn't arrived yet. My chances of making it to Seattle in time for the party disappear.
• Once I arrive in Seattle, I fill out the lost baggage form at the United desk. Once I hand it to the United lady, she enters in the info, finishes up, and just as I'm leaving she calls out "Oh, I see you came in on American on your last leg! You can't do this here, you need to go to the American lost baggage desk!" I explain that it was freakin' United that lost my bag, that United is the one who can do something now that their computer knows who the other half of the ticket belongs to, that American had nothing to do with it, but she insists, citing some arcane airline rule.

I'm trying to keep it all in perspective -- this isn't that big a deal, overall, there are much bigger problems in the world -- but wow, I'm frustrated.