I experience a grueling travel day thanks to automated systems and basic ineptitude at American Airlines.
I’ll try to make this short, mostly because I’m exhausted and don’t want to spend too much time writing about it. But it was such a crazy experience that I want to record it for posterity.
The Backstory
I just finished a two week delivery/training boat captain gig in Florida. The owner of the boat, a 2024 Beneteau Antares 11, needed to move the boat from Niceville on the Florida panhandle to Jacksonville on the northeastern Florida coast, a distance of more than 800 nautical miles. John had zero boating experience and his insurance company required an experienced training captain on board. John found me through my YouTube Great Loop videos. We had 2 weeks to do the trip and we managed with a day to spare.
There’s a lot more to this story, but I’ll cover the highlights in my Great Loop blog. All I can say is that I don’t know how people can live with the heat and humidity in Florida in August.
The Flights, as Planned and Changed
My flights home were yesterday, August 13. I wasn’t sure if we’d get back in time for an early flight, so I booked one departing Jacksonville at 4:47 PM. The plan was Jacksonville to Charlotte, Charlotte to Seattle, and Seattle to Wenatchee. Three flights. American Airlines for the first two and Alaska Air/Horizon for the last. I’d get in at 11:59 PM and my truck was parked in the long term lot.
Unfortunately, John had appointments that afternoon so he had to drop me off at the airport at 11 AM. No big deal. I can wait at airports.
I checked the weather and discovered that afternoon t-storms were forecasted right around the time of departure. So I went to the gate where an earlier flight to Charlotte was boarding. Another flight would leave two hours later. I meekly asked if it were possible to get on an earlier flight since t-storms were forecasted. To my amazement, the gate agent gave me a boarding pass for a middle seat on the flight that was boarding. He also gave me a standby receipt for an earlier flight to Seattle from Charlotte.
I hopped on the flight. My seat was in one of the forward “premium” rows so there was legroom and being in the middle wasn’t horrible. 90 minutes later, I was in Charlotte.
In Charlotte
The flight I was on standby for would board shortly. I decided that I didn’t want a middle seat — which I knew I’d get on standby — for a 4 1/2 hour flight. So I went to the gate and gave up my standby spot. I’d be on the 7:23 PM flight from Charlotte to Seattle as originally planned.
I had four hours to kill in Charlotte. I started by having lunch at a decent sit-down seafood place. Charlotte’s airport is very large — maybe larger than SeaTac? — and there were plenty of dining options. And shops, although none of them really interested me.
After lunch, I wandered over to the main atrium area and took a seat in a rocker.
It was around then that I checked the American Airlines app. It still showed me departing Jacksonville at 4:47. That was odd. It was as if American didn’t know I was already in Charlotte. I decided to make sure that my boarding pass on the next leg was still valid. I went to the customer service desk, which wasn’t busy at all. The guy there was friendly and helpful and even upgraded my seat to an exit row at no extra charge.
I walked over to the gate my Seattle flight would leave from. I did a crossword puzzle and got a fresh made Cinnabon with half the icing.
American Proves It’s Clueless
My phone started pinging with reminders to board the Jacksonville flight. The app showed I was still booked on it, but my seat on the Seattle fight was still there.
A while later, my phone pinged with a fight delay notification. Weather had moved into Jacksonville, just as I thought it might. My flight out of there was delayed. Good thing I’d gotten an earlier flight out!
And then the app’s notifications informed me that because I’d no longer make my connection in Charlotte to Seattle, they’d rebooked my flight — to LAX! They basically rescheduled all of my flights so I’d be going from Charlotte to Los Angeles that day, overnight in Los Angeles, and then take flights the next morning to Seattle and Wenatchee. That would get me home at 2 PM the next day!
WTF?
I went back to the customer service desk. By now, a few east coast planes had been delayed — there were apparently T-storms up and down the coast, although not at Charlotte. There was a line. I waited on it. I got the same customer service guy and he remembered me. He looked up my flight info and, sure enough, my reservations had been changed.
He restored my flight out of Charlotte and even managed to get me the same seat.
On my way back to the gate, I called Alaska Air to make sure I could still get on the flight to Wenatchee that night. I was halfway back when the agent told me that they couldn’t change it because it was booked through American. So I doubled back to the customer service desk. The line was long now, but I didn’t wait on it. Instead, I waited near the guy who’d helped me twice. When he was finished with the guy he was helping, I told him what I needed. He checked the reservation and found that the fix he’d made for me was undone and I was booked on a later flight to LAX again.
He fixed it again, this time with notes on my record. I lost my exit row seat but wound up closer to the front in another window seat. I had boarding passes for both flights.
To Seattle
I went back to the gate. They had started boarding. I came up to the gate before my group was called and the bitchy gate agent told me to put my carry on bag in the box they use to check bag sizes. No one’s bag ever fits in that damn thing and mine didn’t either. She forced me to check it. I think she was trying to punish me, but it turned out to be a good thing she did. I pulled my laptop and journal out of the bag, put them in a tote I had, and left the bag at the gate.
I got on the plane. I had an unpleasant flight from Charlotte to Seattle. Did you know that American Airlines doesn’t offer food on 4 1/2 hour flights? It’s a good thing I had a big lunch.
The only good thing about the flight was the sunset that lasted about two hours.
I Become the Woman Running to Catch a Plane at the Airport
Although the plane left a little late, it arrived a little early. That was a good thing because I only had an hour until my next flight.
But then we sat on the taxiway between two active runways for 40 minutes. When we finally got to the gate, the flight attendants told the passengers that there were 9 of us with very close connections. This made it possible for me, in row 14, to get off the plane very quickly. I was at the farthest Terminal D gate and needed to get to the farthest Terminal C gate. Not having that checked bag to drag along with me made it possible for me to run — yes, run! — for part of the way to my other gate. (I think I would have dropped dead running if I’d tried to run the whole way.) I was just entering Terminal C when they announced a 2-minute warning for closing the doors to my flight. I ran into the area waiving my boarding pass and yelling “Wenatchee, Wenatchee!” I wasn’t even sure where to go. The gate agent waved me over and let me through the gate. I made my way down to the tarmac and up the ramp. I got on the plane. I wound up sitting in the wrong seat, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home.
A Happy Ending … and Lesson Learned
The plan landed early, at 11:49 PM. (It’s a short flight.) Of course, my checked luggage was not on it. I would have been very surprised if it was. That required me to work with the Wenatchee staff to get my bag located and scheduled for delivery. It arrived at my house at 4 PM today.
It’s pretty clear to me that America West, the airline I flew many times to and from Phoenix when I lived in Arizona, did not survive the merger with US Air and American Airlines. I hope I never have to fly American again.
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