frustrating flying experience
 

Can people share their experience regarding to all the flight delays/cancellation or any kind of problems they had gone through?

i'm a long distance flyer, and i had one very frustrating experience from last year that i could never forget. I was departing from Boston Logan and my final destination was Hong Kong. Ok, so my flight schedule was the following...well, since that was a last minute booking so i ended up like this (they actually made me routing to Frankfort germany when i first trying to reserve a ticket, but anyway): Boston (US air) ->Seattle (US air) - > San Francisco (SQ) -> Hong Kong. Since Boston was having this thunderstorm the day i departured, so the US airways had to delay my flight to seattle which would have me missed my flight from Seattle to SF and then the rest of the routine would just mess up. But since i was traveling in Business class, they had to treat me a little nicer so they 're-schedule' my flights AGAIN, so i ended like this: Boston (UA) -> Washington DC (UA) -> SF (UA) -> Tokyo (UA) -> HK ...

And the story begins, by the time i got to DC, my flight for SF had just taken off 5 minutes before i got there and that was 11pm at night and that was the last flight for SF. So i went up to the service desk and they arranged me a room in the airport hotel and they made the 3rd change to my flight schedule, and then i remembered my luggages and wondered where they were, coz my flight schedules have been changed twice already after i checked in, and the lady in the front desk told me to ask people in SF when i get there, ok fine... basically i didn't sleep at all coz it was already 1am by the time i got to the hotel and then i left at 6am for the SF flight. So it went quite smooth from SF to Tokyo to HK, but it took me 3 days to arrive hong kong instead of 1 day. And i had to leave for Shanghai 48 hours later. And when i checked up with the staff about my luggages in HKG, they couldn't locate my luggages and didn't know where they were. Since i arrived HKG early in the morning, I called up UA every 3 hours or so to see if they have found my luggages, but no luck for the first day. And then i got worried on the 2nd day since i had to leave HK in 24 hours and they still hadn't found my luggages... then here comes the 3rd day, and they called me up in the early morning and told me that my luggages were there in the airport and the staff could deliver them to me before 12pm, then i was finally relieved, but i technically spent 30 mins to unpack + pack before i left home for shanghai that afternoon.

That was hectic...... :rolleyes:

I started long distance traveling since i was 15 and this was just the most chaotic experience i ever had.

woroine, welcome to FlyerTalk! Your post seems more apt to our TravelBuzz forum rather than this forum which is the place to arrange meetings among FTers and to talk about personal milestones of FTers. I'll move it there. Ocn Vw 1K, Co-Moderator.

Wow, that wears me out just reading it! But it sounds like so many adventures in flying from past posters. It would be wonderful if we could all travel sans delays...but the reality of it is, we can't all of the time. Weather plays a big part in air travel and I'd rather be safe than sorry.

If you've traveled so much since you were 15 (sorry, but I'm assuming that was a few years ago) and this has only happened to you once, consider yourself lucky and assume it won't happen again for a long time! :D

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Flying SEA-DTW-EWR with a 6 month old puppy dog. This was pre- the nice new DTW terminal, in about june 2000. DTW got shut down (thunderstorms and radar problems if I recall correctly) and I was stuck for 24 hours with puppy. Oh man. I will say now thank god I had him with me, he at least kept me from getting bored. He's so mellow, he was happy to walk and down the sidewalk in front of the terminals for hours, and I smuggled him into a hotel room that night, wrapped in my sweater. (He weighed only about 7 lbs at that time, no one noticed him in the huge check in lines.)

As egtravel says... if you've traveled a lot, something like this is going to happen to you. Best to pull your cellphone out, call the elite line and get a confirmed rebooking, then roll with it as best as you can. :p

2 weeks ago, I flew United from ORD to MIA, non-stop, and took my golf clubs with me. This was my first and last time travelling with my clubs.

When I arrived in Miami around 1:00 p.m., I was informed that the clubs never made it on the plane, but they would be coming in on a later flight, eventually being delivered to my hotel. Once I arrived at the hotel, I let the bell captain know what was going on.

After dinner, I spoke to the bell captain and he said that my clubs arrived and had been delivered to my room. I didn't think to go check, and went to a party in one of the hotel ballrooms.

When I returned to my room, far from sober around 2:00 a.m., there were clubs in my room, but not mine. United had delivered the wrong clubs to my hotel, and my clubs were sitting in someone else's possession. The only thing in common was that we both had the same first names.

After a few phone calls, I was able to locate the owner of the clubs and arrange for United to come make a quick swap. My clubs were safely delivered to my room around 4:00 a.m.

Thanks United.

Yeah, sometime things just happen, and it's good to have a friend or someone to travel along with. But when i was in high school, my best friend and I travelled back home for our christmas/summer break together for a few times and it's funny that whenever I travelled with her, our flights always got delayed or cancelled (twice) due to the snowstorm or some aircraft mechanical problems but once i stopped travelling with her, my flights got to arrive earlier than the scheduled time. :p