I know the Miami Airport like the back of my hand...
Yup, I do, since we got to spend 13 hours in it.
First of all, I never call about my flights to see if they are on time. Sometimes I check online, but if anything, my flights are late, and I can deal with a few hours at the airport to wait for my flight. I will from now on check on all my flights.
Okay, with that out of the way, here is the story:
We showed up to the airport Sunday morning at 7:00 to get our tickets for our 9:00 flight. The United clerk couldn't seem to find us in the computer. He finally found us by our confirmation numbers and informed us that our flight was changed to 6:00 that morning and we had missed it. So we thought, well, there has to be enough flights going back that we can just jump on the next flight -- WRONG, it was January 1st, one of the busiest days for flying in the year, and apparently EVERYTHING was booked. He told us the only thing he could do was put us on stand-by for a 5:00 p.m. heading to Dallas, and then we would be stand-by from Dallas to Calgary. He told us that was our only option, so we took it. We slept in the airport, ate in the airport, played games in the airport and read in the airport for 10 hours. We headed to the gate in time to catch the flight at 5:00, only to find out that we were not on the top of the stand-by list, like we had been told, and that we wouldn't be making the flight, but conveniently the other four people that made it onto that flight didn't look like they had been sleeping in the airport for the last 10 hours. So I asked the ticket guy what was their priority for picking people for stand-by, since surely we were the first ones on the list. He said it was done by how much people paid for their ticket. Brian's was bought on his mom's airmiles, and mine was paid for, so we were bumped to the bottom because of the airmiles. By the way, by this time I was in complete tears and uttering words that my husband has NEVER heard come out of my mouth -- I don't think he thought I knew some of them.
***** Side note: That does not make any sense. Do you know how many flights had to be purchased in order to get that free one? GRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr.......*****
So then we headed (I waddled) back to the United counter, only to find out that the 5:00 flight was their last flight of the day, so they closed down. There was not a sole to be found that was paid by United. So we were pretty ticked off. We headed over to the Air Canada counter, because they are in the "Star Alliance" with United, and we wondered if they could help. They were really nice, but were booked and had stand-bys full, so we weren't going anywhere that night. So Air Canada just suggested that we get a hotel or sleep in the airport (NOT LIKELY) and come first thing in the morning and get a flight.
So that's what we did. This pregnant duck, as Brian calls me so fondly with my waddle, was not going to be staying in the airport any longer. I was done! So there is a hotel thing that connects you to all the hotels in the area and you can take a shuttle to the airport. So we called around about prices, and we found one for around $90 (which wasn't the lowest price, but not the highest either). We caught the shuttle to the hotel, and ran to our room as quickly as possible. You see, our hotel was attached to a bar, and the locale around the airport area is much less than desirable. We were just glad to see a bed and a shower and free wireless internet! We never heard the bar, but I'm sure we were both so tired we wouldn't have woken up at anything. So it was about 11 by the time we got to bed and got all the phone calls made to our parents and people that were supposed to be picking us up at the airport. We set the alarm for 4:30 and out of bed we got. We got showered and ready to go and caught the shuttle back to the airport at 5:30. We barely missed the 5:00 shuttle ... grrr...
So we get to the airport, the United counter, and I stand in line, and when I get to the front of the line, the lady, Maxine Mitchell, our savior, asked me what was wrong, what happened! I explained our situation and she managed to get us on a flight that was pretty much boarding at that moment. We boogied through security and made it onto our flight :) Not stand-by! She got both of our flights booked for the exit row -- love the extra leg room! We made it into Calgary at a reasonable time. I was just glad to be home.
Those are two days of my life I can't get back. I was a cranky pregnant lady, and Brian has now started to just call me pranky! Anyway, I have slowly recovered, and I'm doing better, but I didn't think I'd risk flying so soon again, and now I'm headed off to Inuvik for a week on February 6th. That's for my next blog!
First of all, I never call about my flights to see if they are on time. Sometimes I check online, but if anything, my flights are late, and I can deal with a few hours at the airport to wait for my flight. I will from now on check on all my flights.
Okay, with that out of the way, here is the story:
We showed up to the airport Sunday morning at 7:00 to get our tickets for our 9:00 flight. The United clerk couldn't seem to find us in the computer. He finally found us by our confirmation numbers and informed us that our flight was changed to 6:00 that morning and we had missed it. So we thought, well, there has to be enough flights going back that we can just jump on the next flight -- WRONG, it was January 1st, one of the busiest days for flying in the year, and apparently EVERYTHING was booked. He told us the only thing he could do was put us on stand-by for a 5:00 p.m. heading to Dallas, and then we would be stand-by from Dallas to Calgary. He told us that was our only option, so we took it. We slept in the airport, ate in the airport, played games in the airport and read in the airport for 10 hours. We headed to the gate in time to catch the flight at 5:00, only to find out that we were not on the top of the stand-by list, like we had been told, and that we wouldn't be making the flight, but conveniently the other four people that made it onto that flight didn't look like they had been sleeping in the airport for the last 10 hours. So I asked the ticket guy what was their priority for picking people for stand-by, since surely we were the first ones on the list. He said it was done by how much people paid for their ticket. Brian's was bought on his mom's airmiles, and mine was paid for, so we were bumped to the bottom because of the airmiles. By the way, by this time I was in complete tears and uttering words that my husband has NEVER heard come out of my mouth -- I don't think he thought I knew some of them.
***** Side note: That does not make any sense. Do you know how many flights had to be purchased in order to get that free one? GRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr.......*****
So then we headed (I waddled) back to the United counter, only to find out that the 5:00 flight was their last flight of the day, so they closed down. There was not a sole to be found that was paid by United. So we were pretty ticked off. We headed over to the Air Canada counter, because they are in the "Star Alliance" with United, and we wondered if they could help. They were really nice, but were booked and had stand-bys full, so we weren't going anywhere that night. So Air Canada just suggested that we get a hotel or sleep in the airport (NOT LIKELY) and come first thing in the morning and get a flight.
So that's what we did. This pregnant duck, as Brian calls me so fondly with my waddle, was not going to be staying in the airport any longer. I was done! So there is a hotel thing that connects you to all the hotels in the area and you can take a shuttle to the airport. So we called around about prices, and we found one for around $90 (which wasn't the lowest price, but not the highest either). We caught the shuttle to the hotel, and ran to our room as quickly as possible. You see, our hotel was attached to a bar, and the locale around the airport area is much less than desirable. We were just glad to see a bed and a shower and free wireless internet! We never heard the bar, but I'm sure we were both so tired we wouldn't have woken up at anything. So it was about 11 by the time we got to bed and got all the phone calls made to our parents and people that were supposed to be picking us up at the airport. We set the alarm for 4:30 and out of bed we got. We got showered and ready to go and caught the shuttle back to the airport at 5:30. We barely missed the 5:00 shuttle ... grrr...
So we get to the airport, the United counter, and I stand in line, and when I get to the front of the line, the lady, Maxine Mitchell, our savior, asked me what was wrong, what happened! I explained our situation and she managed to get us on a flight that was pretty much boarding at that moment. We boogied through security and made it onto our flight :) Not stand-by! She got both of our flights booked for the exit row -- love the extra leg room! We made it into Calgary at a reasonable time. I was just glad to be home.
Those are two days of my life I can't get back. I was a cranky pregnant lady, and Brian has now started to just call me pranky! Anyway, I have slowly recovered, and I'm doing better, but I didn't think I'd risk flying so soon again, and now I'm headed off to Inuvik for a week on February 6th. That's for my next blog!
posted by Devynn @ 5:30 PM
1 Comments:
At 7:42 AM,
Alyson said…
I can see why you wanted to go to Miami, but Inuvik?
About the airport thing, I see a children book in there. Call it living in the airport or something. Ok bad idea, but what a comedy of errors.
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