Friday 12/31/04
My parents recently moved to Huntersville, North Carolina (just north of Charlotte) and so that's where I went for Christmas this year. Courtesy of Northwest Airlines, the flight out was a genuine traveler's nightmare.
I flew from Seattle to Memphis, Tennessee, where I was to catch a plane to Charlotte. The first flight was late leaving, and thus late arriving in Memphis. By the time I arrived in Memphis, my Charlotte flight's takeoff time had passed. The monitors in the terminal claimed the Charlotte flight was on time, leaving at 7:15, and sure enough, when I went to the indicated gate, flight information for a flight to Chicago Midway was displayed on the LED sign at the gate.
After a brief, somewhat confused, discussion with the gate agent regarding how the hell they were going to get me to Charlotte, it came out that the Charlotte flight had not, in fact, left. The Chicago Midway flight was ahead of it. The plane that would be the Charlotte flight couldn't even get to the gate until the Chicago flight left. They were waiting for a flight attendant for the Chicago flight, they claimed. (Possibly the flight attendant was held up because of bad weather at Memphis, more about which in a moment, or else he or she was taking part in an employee sick-out that was apparently directed against certain airlines.) Normally they would have just had the Charlotte-bound plane come in at another gate, but it seems they were waiting for a crew member for that flight as well!
The Chicago Midway flight didn't go anywhere that night, and neither did my Charlotte flight. However, the gate agents stubbornly refused to re-book anyone until they received a call from their higher-ups telling them officially that the flight had been canceled and authorizing them to re-book passengers. After a couple of hours, the Northwest Airlines Web site and 800 number confirmed the cancellation, but they clung to procedure: they were waiting for the damn phone call. Eventually, a supervisor arrived, took some initiative and began booking Charlotte and Chicago-bound passengers on flights for the next day, and issuing hotel vouchers for the night's lodging, although he made sure we all knew that he still hadn't received that call, from which I suppose we were meant to conclude that he was putting his job on the line for us. I wasn't impressed. I also wasn't going anywhere that night.
The next startling development was that the gate agents, whose job revolves around data entry, could not in fact type on a computer keyboard at a rate faster than about one character per second. The supervisor was faster but not by much, and in any case, the other gate agents left at some point, cutting the number of personnel assisting passengers by two thirds. It was closing in on 1 AM Memphis time before I finally got booked on a US Airways flight the next afternoon and received a hotel voucher.
Mr. Cooper, the supervisor whose spirits, I must admit, were holding up admirably under the pressure of a hundred withering stares, also placed a luggage pick order so I could get my checked bag before I went to the hotel. This goal, however, was stymied when I actually went to the baggage claim and was told that due to the late hour and lack of staff, they weren't picking any more bags that night and that my bag would be on the first flight to Charlotte the next day. I would have to pick it up at the Northwest baggage office when I arrived there. Okay, fine. At least I had my toiletries in my carry-on, and I'd be able to have a shower, so I should be able to keep the second-day funk under control.
An ice storm had descended on Memphis, and the town, like many towns that see snow only a few times in each winter, was heroically unprepared for it. It was also after one o'clock in the morning. As a result, only a few brave and hardy taxi drivers were plying their trade. And they were charging double, triple rates, or even higher. People were being crammed four to a cab. I waited more than two hours to catch a ride to the hotel. One of my co-passengers was in a hotel that was at the top of a small hill -- really more a rise in the asphalt than an actual geographic feature. The cab was unable to climb the hill, and the passenger was made to de-cab and carry his own bags up the icy hill to the hotel! Fortunately, the approach to the Clarion, where I was staying, was flat. It was 3:30 AM by the time I was in my room.
Sleep came quickly, but so did morning. After missing the hotel's complimentary continental breakfast, I shared a cab back to the airport. Total cost for both of us together: $6. (I had paid $15 for just my leg the previous night, and considered it a bargain.)
I hadn't eaten anything but an airline turkey sandwich and a candy bar the previous day -- the airport restaurants all closed at 8 PM -- and I ravenously tucked into a Backyard Burger for breakfast. US Airways had kindly marked my ticket for the full security Monty, including a wanding and a hand search of my carry-on, but as I was, unbelievably, the only person in the line, I was still through security in about five minutes. The commuter jet to Charlotte, scheduled to depart at 2:45, was delayed, but it did eventually take off about an hour late, and I was indeed on it. At last!
Upon landing, the adventure of obtaining my checked bag began. I was told by the Northwest baggage clerk that, contrary to what I had been told in Memphis, my bag had been transferred to US Airways, since I'd been re-booked over to them, and I should inquire at their baggage office.
As an irritating aside, when I had arrived at the Northwest baggage claim office, I was behind about four people. The guy at the front of the line had also come in from Memphis on the same US Airways flight, and she told him he'd have to check with them. I hadn't been paying close attention to this interaction, and asked the clerk to confirm what I thought I'd heard, as did the woman behind me (who was in the same situation), but, unfathomably, the clerk told me I'd have to wait my turn. Ten minutes later she was telling me what I thought I'd heard the first time. The technical term for a female who provides this sort of doggedly literal passive-aggressive customer service is "bitch."
Charlotte is a US Airways hub and they have a lot of flights in and out, so naturally they lose more total luggage than the other airlines, and the line at their baggage office was scary-looking. I decided to see if, by some miracle, my bag had come in on the same flight on which they delivered my person. Checking the monitors, I saw that baggage from my flight would be delivered on Carousel E. Carousel E, however, held only a few bags, none of them mine. (Did I mention Carousel E was at the opposite end of the terminal from the NWA baggage office? Hooray.) So, back to the US Airways baggage office and its scary line. I called my sister, who lives in the area and was even then circling the airport drive waiting to pick me up, and told her she should find someplace to park because I was probably going to be a while.
About thirty seconds after I hung up with her, a fellow passenger on the Memphis-Charlotte flight recognized me, tapped my shoulder and said, "Hey, they've got our bags down at carousel A2!" I was still by no means certain that my bag had even arrived with my flight, but I figured I couldn't get any more at the back of the US Airways baggage line than I already was, so I hoofed it down to carousel A2. Which, as you might have guessed from the way my day had been going, was back down by the Northwest baggage office.
You probably can guess what happened next. There, sitting right at the front of a neatly-arranged block of luggage on the floor beside the carousel, was my bag. I was gobsmacked. Really, I couldn't believe my eyes.
Quickly I whipped out my cell phone to tell my sister that I had my bag after all and that she shouldn't park. "Pick me up at door A." "I just passed door A! Can you get to door B, I just pulled over there?" "Yeah, no problem." Just as I'm about to go out door B, my phone rings again. A cop had waved my sister away, since it was a pick-up zone and she wasn't actually picking up anyone at that precise moment. She was going to have to go around the loop again. The technical term for a male who engages in this anal form of law enforcement is "asshole."
Twenty minutes later, I was finally in my sister's RAV4 and on the way up the interstate to my parents' new house. I was only about twenty hours late.
My flights back to Seattle, thankfully, were smooth as silk in comparison. They were not only on time, they were both early in arriving. I made my connection in Minneapolis/St. Paul on the way back; Minnesotans know how to keep an airport functioning during winter. (One of my mistakes, obviously, was booking through Memphis on the way out on the theory that they wouldn't have winter.) On the last leg of the flight, a small Japanese man overcompensated for his comparative lack of stature by jamming his elbow into my ribs at every opportunity. It took nearly an hour for my bag to spew forth onto the carousel at Sea-Tac. These minor insults were easily overlooked, naturally, as my aggravation-meter had been forcibly re-calibrated by the outbound trip.
After fifteen years of flying just a couple of times a year, the thing that I've always been afraid would happen to me while flying has finally happened. And although it was a huge hassle, and while Northwest made it much more stressful than it should have been thanks to their genuinely passenger-hostile policies and their marginally competent employees, well, now I've been the victim of a giant airline clusterfuck, and I dealt. Now I can relax, as this probably won't happen again to me for another fifteen years -- maybe thirty, if I don't fly Northwest again. And when it does, I know I can survive it.
Since our family does not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday per se, I am beginning a campaign to change our annual family gathering and gift-giving occasion to a different time of year. A time of year, I hope, in which half the country isn't also trying to go somewhere, and perhaps even a time in which snow will not be a factor. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner.
Now that I'm back, though, keep an eye the thumbnail image in the top left corner of this page for a few photos from my Charlotte trip. My dad was a good sport about accompanying me in my photo walkabout in uptown Charlotte and the environs of the new house. I've posted the first image already.
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