Sunshine and Light

The Saga

I realized I never quite told the story of our American Airlines adventure getting to/from France. Some of it was bad luck, most of it was exacerbated by the apathy of the employees involved.

Our little adventure started out in Nashville on a stormy Sunday. We had a super tight connection in Chicago to our Paris flight (36 minutes), so we were already in trouble. But it was considerably cheaper so we decided to take the risk. Anyway, the flight in Nashville was grounded by continuous electrical storms. Lightning at any airport means that the workers are all brought in, and no baggage is loaded/unloaded. It quickly became obvious that we were going to miss our flight. We asked the woman at the gate if we could connect to a flight in another city that may be leaving later, but she said we could just fly to Chicago and see what they could do for us.

We should have ignored her. Essentially she was pawning our problem off.

Two hours late, we arrived in Chicago having missed any direct flights to either Paris or Brussels (we were staying roughly ½ way between them). When we got off the plane, they told us that we were re-booked on a flight to Paris 24 hours later. Which would totally have sucked as we were supposed to be going into Belgium on Tuesday and would have involved much running back and forth for everyone on the tour. So we pleaded with a ticket agent and got a flight to London that night with a connection to Brussels that was supposed to get in at 2:30PM the same day we would have gone to Paris. We emailed the tour operator with the flight into Brussels, but not that we would be coming from London. Got on our flight to London… and sat on the plane for 2 hours. We got to London and asked which direction we needed to go. We were misdirected and stood in line for 30 minutes and missed our connection to Brussels. When we didn’t show up on our flight to Brussels, our tour leader thought we were still in the US, so he went back to the gites in France where we were staying. With no phone and no internet. When we got to Brussels around 4, our baggage didn’t arrive. So finally at 8:30 PM, the last bag arrived and we went to take the train to Lille. Except we’d missed the last train, and because of the strikes there wouldn’t be anything in the AM. So Chris asked a taxi driver how much to go to Lille. 250 Euros, he said. Chris said “no” and he adjusted to 200 Euros. Chris still said “no” and another guy approached with 150 Euros. We were running out of options, so we took it.

The guy was a little shady to begin with, but it became obvious quickly, something was wrong. They rushed us through a parking garage, and into a car that was no where near the taxi area. Because of the bike box, they took the bike down, and folded the box up, and handed Chris his pedal wrench to hold. At that point, I relaxed. No way that they would have handed him a weapon if they were going to abscond with us or murder us. So we went off through the Belgium countryside in the shady dude’s car with his father/grandfather/elderly friend snoozing in the front seat next to him. Chris was convinced the whole time that we would end up racing bikes in a basement like they did in Triplets of Belleville. But they dropped us off at the train station as we requested, and all was well. For 30 seconds. Until we started to be approached by drunk/stoned street people, walking past gangs, and obviously not in a good neighborhood.

We finally managed to flag down a taxi and got our first good break of the trip. The guy was WONDERFUL. His car wasn’t big enough to take us, so he called a fellow taxi driver and then waited with us until the other driver arrived. The other driver was super cool, helped us in trying to call the gites (wrong number), and in dealing with the guy we woke up thinking we’d found our gites (who was surprisingly nice, actually). The driver and Chris talked Paris-Roubaix (André Tchmil!), and we arrived with everything in one piece at 11:30PM.

On the flight back, the flight out of Paris left on time, and we had a 1 ½ hour layover in Chicago. Which would have been fine had American not
Had a problem unloading luggage
Had a policy of having to re-check your luggage after customs 45 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave. (It got delayed an hour, but we found out too late).

So we were re-booked on the last flight of the night. Which had mechanical problems. And cancelled after it was too late to address. Instead of getting to Nashville at 8:30 Tues night, we were scheduled for 1PM on Wednesday. NOT.HAPPY. Then we went down to baggage claim only to find out that we had to specially request our bags and then wait ½ hour to an hour to get the bags. There was a full-scale revolt with the fellow passengers on the plane, complete with calling in the supervisor and screaming at her. Bear in mind this whole time, the AA people were like…eh. Who cares. Who cares that the two businessmen had a day full of meetings in Nashville followed by flights to Little Rock the next day. Who cares that the woman from Copenhagen had to cancel 17 appts with patients (this was not her first delay). And then the supervisor came out and said “I can’t do anything, it’s a process”. After much screaming she walked into the back, and some of the luggage magically appeared. Then Chris and the dr from Copenhagen went back and got the rest of it.

The good news is that the fit Chris pitched at the desk got us into the Wyndham suites for the night, which was a good deal nicer, I’ll bet, than the Holiday Inn and the Ramada Inn that the people around us got. The bad news is when we got to the hotel I made a bolt for the bathroom. Then the next morning several more bolts for the bathroom. Then everything I consumed, liquid or solid, was giving me serious stomach cramps. By the time we touched down in Nashville I was in a lot of pain and was just gritting my teeth to stand up straight. Chris carried my backpack and went to the baggage claim while I went to the little shop to buy Imodium. Which they wouldn’t sell me because I didn’t have US currency, and my only form of ID was in the backpack that Chris had in baggage claim. So I couldn’t use a credit card. Bitch. How many credit thefts involve a $2 Imodium purchase? About two hours after we got to my MILs house, I was running 102 fever.

The whole drive home on Friday I kept praying… “Dear Lord, please don’t let us crash.” It was the only thing left to complete the whole experience.

Lessons learned:
1. Big layovers on international trips are a must. I knew it, but had to be reminded.
2. Don't fly American. If you can't help flying American, don't be Mr Nice Guy. The only way things happened is when we bucked the complacency and when necessary screamed and shouted. Totally against either of our characters, but it was the only way to get assistance.
3. Don't invest in American. That one already has bankruptcy blues worse than any other airlines I've been on. The employees know that the ship is going down, there's nothing to work for long term, and the apathy is overwhelming. Even their flight attendants on international flights don't get a free meal, they have to trot out to the nearest restaurant en flight for theirs. Oh, wait, they can't do that. The signs are REALLY bad.
4. Chris and I are a pretty good team under pressure. We never had a screaming match despite everything, and our individual meltdowns did not occur simultaneously. This meant that one of us was able to handle business while the other rocked in the corner and drooled.

Labels: Travel

posted by MyHusbandRules @ 8:38 AM