Last Saturday, I did my duty and showed up early to the airport for my flight to San Francisco. I was at the gate and ready to go! I got on for the first leg of the flight to Charlotte. As soon as I'm settled and turning on the Champions' League Final, the pilot announces a needed check on the airplane. As I am on American, I know this means an engine has fallen off, and soon enough we all deplane and four stricken looking gate agents try and re-book an entire flight.
My agent eventually realizes the only way to get me to San Francisco is on United. I ask if they should send my luggage out for me to rebook on United. She assures me that it will be sent with me without having to re-check it.
Four days later, I still don't have it.
United did their best. The flight from Hartford to Dulles was behind schedule, so the pilot flew like Maverick from Top Gun and - my favorite part - slammed on the brakes when we landed so we could make the first taxi way to the gate. I managed to run through the concourses in my Travel Crocs and made the connecting flight to San Francisco that got in at 1:30 in the morning.
My bags went to Dallas.
Why Dallas, one might say. But one would not understand that American Airlines exists to make me miserable. It's in their corporate bylaws. For three days, the bag sat in Dallas until some woman there called me and asked me about my bag. She simply read the number on the tag and wanted to know what she should do with the bag. It was on the next plane to SF. All the fucking about with corporate Twitter accounts and calling a customer service rep who never answered his phone and some West Indian woman (I'm guessing from the accent) calls me up and puts it on a plane.
Then, it sits there in SFO. I'm travelling all over the place with my wife. I finally work my way through three different phone trees and I'm talking to another woman in some room inside the new airport and she promises to put the bag on a plane for Medford Oregon tomorrow morning. If that happens, I will finally get my luggage.
I suppose as a politics blog, there should be a broader point.
Because my actual body flew on United, they were supposed to handle the bag once it got to SFO. Since American wouldn't send it to SFO, there was nothing they could do. However, the numerous agents I spoke to in India were all super helpful. Meanwhile, no one at American would answer the phone. I tried calling American at SFO directly. They said I needed to call baggage control, and when I asked for that number they hung up!
People - generally speaking - are nice and want to be helpful, especially if that is part of their job. Organizations, however, can make that impossible. American is such an organization, but it strikes me that this particular situation - two different airlines waiting for the other to act - suggests the need for a specialized, non-airline organization that specifically receives any late bags and reunites them with their owners.
Meanwhile I was stressed and miserable in Sonoma wine country and several national parks.
My poor son is supposed to fly on American in July and I'm terrified of what will happen to him.
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