Airlines (and Also MAYBE America???) Are the Worst

A Travel Saga: Part 2 of 2

When we last left our weary travelers, they had already been traveling for more than 12 hours. Their physical progress? Somehow, they were an inconceivable 126 miles farther away from their final destination. Read Part 1 of their saga here.

Tired, hungry, disheveled and rapidly approaching downright gross, it was time to split up and start solving problems.

This is probably a good time to introduce my traveling party: the Buells.

It was spring break, and Carly’s wonderful and extraordinarily generous parents had whisked the whole family away to California. In total, there were six of us living through this nightmare together.

The parents set off to talk to someone—ANYONE—at American, while the children set off to collect the family’s bags.

Ah, the bags. What a fun little conundrum.

They were not on a baggage carousel, which I guess made some sense, since we were never supposed to be collecting them in San Francisco in the first place. Remember, the bags were supposed to move from an Alaska Airlines cargo hold to an American plane.

Apparently, that’s a real curve ball in the industry, because neither airline had the faintest idea where our bags might be once our trip was canceled. Alaska said they didn’t have them and that it would make sense they would be with American, so we should be talking to them. And, of course, American more or less said the exact opposite. Mind you, it was about 10 pm, the airport was fairly quiet, and the baggage claim counters for both these airlines had NOTHING going on—could you maybe just LOOK?!

After no fewer than three interactions with inept and seemingly annoyed baggage claim agents, someone—at this point, I don’t remember which airline it was—finally relented and made a call to someone somewhere inquiring about our bags. Lo and behold, they have them (crazy, I know).

The baggage has been found. One problem solved.

Now, how the hell do we get home?

Carly’s dad has been on the phone with American this whole time, making almost no progress.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law had identified the one remaining flight with unsold seats headed for Chicago that evening. It would introduce a third airline into the mix—Southwest—and send us to the wrong airport—Midway—but it offered the one thing seemingly no one else could provide: a way to make any substantial progress on our quest to get back home.

It was decided: we at least needed to chat with someone.

Somehow, I had been drafted to the reconnaissance team. Carly’s mom and I set off to gather more information from the ticketing counter.

They had six seats, the plane was set to leave at 11:30 pm—roughly 90 minutes from now—and we had convinced ourselves there were multiple ways we could work through the problem of being stuck at the wrong airport in Chicago. With little time for any additional dillydallying, Carly’s mom threw down the plastic and spent an eyewatering sum on six tickets.

We’re back on track! Kind of.

The traveling party reassembled at the ticket counter to provide identification and finalize arrangements. We then proceeded through security for the third time in one day. And wouldn’t you know it, before we were even back on the right side of airport, our new flight was delayed 30 minutes.

Then 60.

Oh God… it was happening again.

Our flight continues to be pushed back in 15- to 20-minute increments. However, we were assured by the gate agent multiple times that the plane was on its way. And unlike the other flights we were set to take that day, this plane wasn’t coming from Chicago. My brother-in-law looked into it and learned the aircraft we were slated to board had started its day in Baltimore and was now headed north from Los Angeles, encountering no storm systems along the way.

It was now 2:30 a.m.

Finally, the plane landed and deboarded.

“We’re sorry, but this flight crew has timed out. Your flight is canceled. Also, we won’t be doing anything to rebook you or put you in a hotel, because, ya know… weather. ALSO, don’t you dare come up here with any attitude, ‘cause, like, it’s late and stuff, and we’re tired.”

This is the part of the story where I still get pretty livid—and at this point, I have months of distance from this.

WHAT?! CANCELED?! HOW?!

You knew this WHOLE time this crew was going to time out. They hadn’t even departed from Los Angeles by our originally scheduled takeoff time. What was your plan?! Hope the plane would stumble into a wormhole along the way and somehow teleport to San Francisco airspace? Why didn’t you tell us this at 10 pm when we were buying these tickets? Or 11:30 pm, when the plane still hadn’t even left its last destination?  

And WHAT weather?! The “weather” was TWELVE hours ago, and you were never within 500 miles of it!

It’s now 2:30 a.m., and we were right back where we started.

If someone was going to snap, this would have been the moment. But the Buells held strong. They’re sturdy folk. Shocking myself—and maybe partly inspired by their collective resolve—I also somehow managed to not flip out.

Had this been a trip with the Becsey family, we would have been in a hospital by now—someone would have had a brain aneurysm.

We now at least had two bookings on two separate airlines. Surely one of them could present a reasonable path forward.

Southwest’s best offer:

We can put you on an early morning flight to Phoenix. You’ll then stay there literally ALL day—so maybe consider renting a car and seeing the town—but just be sure you’re back for your red-eye to Midway the following night. And then from there… we don’t know what to tell you… We can send you to Detroit and you can rent a car?? How does that sound?

Are you serious? Hard pass.

Back to American. Carly’s mom started working the phones. A new plan emerged: There was room for the six of us on an early morning flight to Philadelphia. From there, we would fly to Detroit, rent a van and drive back to Kalamazoo. And from there, Carly and I could collect our car and head back to Lansing.

Best-case scenario: we’d be home by 10 pm the following day.

It was the best we could possibly do.

With yet another new plan in place, we trudged to baggage claim for the third time, rechecked our bags for the fourth time, and then camped out at security until TSA shows up for work. It was the middle of the night, after all.

From here, the rest of the story is pretty mundane: I attempted to sleep on various surfaces—including filthy airport floors in both San Francisco and Philadelphia—as we waited for planes that more or less arrived and departed as scheduled. Carly was our hero, somehow managing to find enough of a second wind—or, more realistically, maybe third wind—to pilot our car home. We both slept for 10-plus hours, (probably more like 12-plus in Carly’s case), and generally felt like crap for a number of days after the ordeal had concluded.

In hindsight, it’s still not a funny story. I’m still mad. Probably in part because I know this sort of experience is increasingly what we can all come to expect when we fly these days.

Just like nearly everything else, flying in America now feels like a perfect little model of the broader economy: everything stretched thin, every spare dollar squeezed out, every inconvenience pushed downward on to the people least able to do anything about it. It’s a system engineered to run with no slack, no backup plan and no real obligation to the people trapped inside it. Every seat sold. Every crew maximized. Every cost cut. Every inconvenience outsourced to the customer.

Anyway, they hope to welcome you aboard again real soon!