Are we there yet?
August 29 - September 4, 2016
More airline fun
By Jay Edwards
As usual it was air travel at its not so best. We were headed to Glacier National Park, to see our son Matt, who is working at Many Glacier Lodge this summer. So KM and I, and our daughter Alexis, headed out to our local airport, named for a couple of presidents, where we would soon be flying the friendly skies with United … or not.
Someone asked me why I wasn’t driving. I told them that it’s 1865 miles, one way, which, I told them, is like driving to Destin and when you get there you realizie you forgot one of your kids so you turn around and drive back to Little Rock, where you find the kid where you left him, watching his computer. So you put him in the car and drive back to the beach. Those three trips add up to 200 miles less than a drive to West Glacier, which is only about 50 miles from the Alberta, Canada border. So we decided to fly, or at least hoped to.
The first sign of trouble came when we checked our luggage and the young woman began frowning and shaking her head as she stared at the screen. “The plane will be late getting here,” she told me.
They tell travelers to be at the airport two hours before boarding so we have plenty of time. My guess is that doesn’t apply to their own.
“So what seems to be the problem? I asked, already furious. KM squeezed my arm. “It’s mechanical. And with the delay there is no way you’ll make your connection out of Denver to Kalispell. The options are we can fly you from here tomorrow morning or we can send you on to Denver later today and fly you out from there tomorrow morning.”
My feeling when something like this happens is to get as far as you can as soon as you can. I turned to KM and Alexis and told them they would put us up for the night in Denver. “You realize it won’t be the Ritz,” I said. They agreed we should go forward and so we pushed the luggage through and headed towards security.
I looked at my ticket and saw that I was TSA pre-check, which helped improve my attitude about .0001 percent. KM could see I was still grouchy and said, “Our plans don’t change much at all. We’ll still be in Kalispell by ten tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll take odds on that,” I told her.
But it turns out she was right, which is usually the case. Plus, I whined enough to the manager of the Homewood Suites in Kalispell that she waived the $150 cancellation fee, so I had that going for me.
When we arrived in Denver they sent us down to customer service, which, based on the customer server I was dealing with should have been called, “Let’s see how much more this poor schmuck can stand.”
She began by giving us vouchers for food (ten bucks a piece) and transportation to hotel and back (four $50 vouchers). Then she said the words that probably got me dangerously close to committing a federal offense of some kind, like laying down on the floor of an airport and kicking and screaming. She said, “We are only going to give you one room since the three of you are traveling together.”
“No,” I said. “You will give us two rooms because we have two different confirmation numbers.” And after talking to her supervisor, that’s just what she did.
As for the rest of our trip, it could not have gone better. But we still had to get home.
Jay Edwards is editor-in-chief of the Daily Record. Contact him at jedwards@dailydata.com.
