Thursday, May 31, 2007

First day of retirement - living in airline hell


P
HOENIX, Ariz.
- The first day of retirement has found us already acting like cranky retired senior citizens.

The first incident was our fault - trying to take two one-liter bottles of Xango juice in a carry on bag. (Whoops!) But after an intial triggering of a Orange Alert in the airport, we got through the whole episode by repacking a carry-on with the juice and checking it through. I hope the people whose bags are near it don't mind a little Mangosteen smell if the bottles shatter when the cargo hold pressurizes.

But the second incident - when the crankiness started - was believing a gate agent in Sacramento who send he could send our other bags ahead of us and that the bags could travel on a different plane. We wanted to get on an earlier flight, which he said was overbooked, but that we could try in Phoenix to get on. "Don't worry, your bags will beat you to PV if you miss the flight."

Not true, they say here in Phoenix, where another not-very-helpful gate agent said it was unlikely we could get on the plane, or that our bags would ever arrive.

A quick offer to upgrade to First Class seems to have changed his mind about most things, except for the bags which are hopeless snarled in an airline that is famous for its $%^%&#^ ups.

More on all this later when I am safely on the ground in Puerto Vallarta, bags or no bags.

US Airways on way to PV
US Airways - are your bags aboard?

1 comment:

  1. So did you XanGo bottle burst? When my wife and I flew from Seattle to LA, I packed a XanGo bottle in our checked luggage, not thinking that we'd have a problem. Well we did. The bottle cap failed and poured XanGo all over our clothes. We spent 5 hours and a bottle of wine hand-washing clothes in the tub and sink that day.

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