So MrLapLap finally got to talk to a nice, friendly AA employee who has arranged for his baggage to be delivered to us later this evening.
He’s currently on the Heathrow Express.
Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
I don't think AA will expect your husband to wait 4 hours for the bag, so if you can see it's being tracked I'd just go home if there is no-one there and fill in the online forms. But it may give a bit of reassurance to get it reported in LHR if you know someone is coming soon.
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One of the annoyances I have in this space is when people make say 2 unspecific posts about a travel problem, get some good advice or commentary and then we never hear from them again. So I'm quite comfortable getting a perhaps more insight to the poster's thinking and reactions, perhaps in more detail than normal. I do think it's just a weather irrop which was fixed by AA a bit better than I was expecting, so that was also interesting, but ultimately falls into the "stuff happens" category rather than anything major, but obviously we can all think of previous circumstances where that didn't work out. It sounds like a fairly limited irrop, if thousands and thousands of passengers were affected then the system isn't always as customer friendly.
It seems we were REALLY lucky that he didn’t arrive at PHL on the 12th March. There were mega-weather issues, lots of cancellations AND it was Spring Break. When he did arrive there seemed to be knock on effects, that might be why “there is always a next plane” wasn’t necessarily true for the Monday next day (the Embraer 175s are TINY!)
Things actually turned out well for this return trip - despite it being knackering, he obviously went into “shutdown” but revived in time, just.
The more prepared I/we are (one doesn’t need to travel alone any more when personal electronics are working) the fewer difficulties one encounters. I wouldn’t say “knowledge is power”, but it certainly is lubrication!
Am really grateful to have had this chance to get a better understanding of things one “deals with” when flying in a real rather than superficial way. I really do appreciate the patience and generosity in all the well-meaning responses, some might take a while to process, but that’s how I’m wired up. That data will be installed and ready for the next trip.
It’s been a long time since I’ve flown myself, this refresher course with best-practice advice has been great! Thanks again to all who contributed.