I hope my experience last week may help someone else.

As I was stuck in traffic on the way to LAX, I was thinking that missing a flight had to happen to me sooner or later, although I was also thinking, that afternoon flights are almost always delayed anyways so it'll be ok

I got to the Avis rental return at LAX 20 minutes before my scheduled AA flight.

I returned the car, and got on the shuttle bus. I asked the driver if he thought I would be able to catch my flight that was in about 15 minutes, and he immediately called another person to drive me there separately.

So I'm chaffeured to the terminal about 10-15 minutes before flight time, run inside and don't see my flight on the departure screens!

As an Aadvantage Pt, I run to the FC checkin, wait a couple of minutes, and get checked in, thinking also that at least they'll know I'm here. I get checked in, but I was also advised that I should have gone directly to the gate, but I explain that I didn't see the flight listed.

Anyways, I then ran up the escalator, and after x-ray, security, for the first time ever anywhere, asked me to open my carryon for inspection!

Fortunately that took only a minute of poking around, and I run to the gate, which of course, is never one of the closest ones.

As I approach the gate, I hear my name being paged so I stop at the counter, unnecessarily as it turned out, as I'm already checked in so I could just proceed to board.

I board just before they close the gate, and wonder of wonders, find space for my carryon in the overhead by my seat.

Plane departed on time, and arrived a few minutes early at SJC.

Another reason I switched to Avis.

What an inspiring story!!!

Great to know. AA are very good at things like that too. They whisked us of a seriously delayed London arrival in Dealt's terminal, ran us through (Hand baggage only thank Heaven) Immigration (empty by a miracle) and Customs, ran us next door to Terminal 4, through Security, ran us to gate 48 to get our connection to PSP. Imagine who gets our business now? Oh yes thanks for the Avis stroy, they got my vote over Hertz about 3 years ago

Similiar situation happened to me in ShangHai couple of years ago. We are about 10 mins away from departure to Beijing, and when i saw the looong lines in the Security check-in, i thought that we will difinately missed the plane, but lo and behold, an Air China agent dressed in Red, yelled our names out to the crowd, and when we answered, she took us pass security and on to the plane.
When we got on the plane, everyone was looking at us like," oh so you are the one who delayed this flight!"

I was very both very greatful and embrassed.

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Al

[This message has been edited by afang (edited 02-19-2001).]

I flew quite a bit from '92 to '97 and always used Avis. I returned to a job where I fly a lot in '99, and, since most of my colleagues use Hertz, I've used them and only rarely used Avis. However, I remember several incidents in my first flying career in which I told the roving Avis agent that I was about to miss a flight and he jumped in the car and chauffered me to the terminal. I haven't had that situation yet with Hertz, but it's interesting that such wonderful service completely slipped my mind. I guess I was so young (early 20's) that I assumed such service was normal. Now I know that it's usually a fight just to get the service that has been contracted!

Thanks for the reminder. Perhaps I'll try Avis again (although I prefer Hertz's #1 Club Gold web reservations to Avis' Preferred web reservations). Then again, perhaps I will put Hertz to the test and see if they also pass muster!

FF