So, I had a pretty harrowing day of travel on Tuesday. My apologies in advance; this is going to be a rant, so I will include a tl;dr at the bottom.

After a lovely long weekend of skiing Breck, my fiancé and I headed out at 7 a.m. on Tuesday to drive to DEN. He was supposed to fly UA out at 11:30, and I was on the 10:50 flight to CVG with a 35-minute layover before my connection to BOS.

As we were leaving the hotel, I got a FlyDelta message saying that DEN-CVG would be 25 minutes late, so I would probably miss my connection. I had spotty internet service coming through the mountains, and @DeltaAssist was coming up empty on rebookings for me in F (I had upgrades on both segments), but after an hour or so, I finally managed to snag F/J seats through ATL using the FlyDelta app. Phew.

We got to DEN and returned the car. My fiancé checked in at UA and printed his BP. We walked across to the DL counter, and I checked my 42-pound suitcase (not overstuffed, only about two-thirds full). Meanwhile, my fiancé got an email from UA saying that the flight he just printed a BP pass for had been cancelled. They rebooked him on the 7:30, and after some phone agent heckling, he managed to get a seat on the 1:30 instead. He tried to standby for the 11:30, which was delayed until noon, but it was oversold. I left him at the gate and boarded my plane on time.

Both of my flights were uneventful. I got my first lunch in F and dinner in J, which were kind of neat. My fiancé made it home to Houston safely by the time we were wheels up in ATL.

Fast forward to BOS baggage claim. Now, if you have flown through BOS, you can probably appreciate how AWFUL and slow their baggage claim is. I waited over half an hour before bags started to appear on the belt. When my bag arrived, I leaned over to lift it, and the front cover flew completely open, spewing my clothes, underwear, and ski gear all over the belt. I was livid. I was over four hours late getting home, I was exhausted, and now my bag (a present from my parents for high school graduation) was demolished. The zipper pulls were where I had left them, but the teeth had been ripped apart along the entire length of the zipper, and they were NOT going back together.

I took the bag to DL baggage services, and the attendant offered to either help me tape my bag together or replace it. Well, duh. She gave me a brand-new full-sized, softsided Kirkland spinner bag to replace my decade-old-plus monster, so I happily accepted, repacked, and went home.

[Later, when I was unpacking, I found a TSA "we searched your bag" notice stuffed into a magazine in my bag, although when I reported the incident to the TSA, they denied any responsibility and said the bag was fine when they searched it. Who knows.]

I sent in a "comment" note on Delta.com, saying that I was very pleased with the way in which the BOS attendant handled the situation, and I would not be filing a baggage damage claim because I felt the issue had been satisfactorily resolved, so I thanked Delta and declared my continued loyalty.

So, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from UPS today saying that I have a 10.5-pound package arriving from Samsonite tomorrow. I went into the tracking information and found that the package had been shipped at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, right after I had checked my bag at DEN. I am guessing that something terrible happened to my bag right after intake, and Delta immediately ordered a (much more expensive) replacement to be shipped to my home in BOS. I was happy with the Kirkland one, but it was quite necessary at the time because there was no way I was going to be able to use my old suitcase to get stuff home (on the T, nonetheless) unless I used it like a flatbed trailer. This Samsonite shipment appears to be independent of what happened at BOS because it was initiated much earlier in the day.

Not bad for a lowly FO, eh?

tl;dr:
16 hours to get from Breckenridge to Boston. Four-hour delay for myself; three-hour delay for my fiancé. Ancient checked bag demolished en route. Delta replaced with Kirkland bag at BOS and appears to be sending additional Samsonite bag to arrive tomorrow. Hooray, Delta! ^