Ugh, Hurricane Irene

The night before my flight home from Atlanta, I coaxed my folks into going to Pappasitos. We finished our meal with tres leches and I used my mom’s iPhone to email a teaser pic to Kevin. That email came to bite me in the ass as my mom received a 3AM reply reading “Karma is a tricky item...I'll see your Tres Leches picture and raise you a cancelled flight out of DC.” Yes, my connecting flight home from DC to Doha had been cancelled due to Hurricane Irene.

Fortunately my parents wake up at the crack of dawn daily and my mom saw the email around 7AM and woke me. Commence a 7 hour period of me on hold with various airlines attempting to get home for our connecting flight to the Maldives (I had a 12 hour window between flights). My situation is a great example of when booking the cheapest flight makes emergency changes a nightmare. I booked through Orbitz and across five flights on this trip I was on three different airlines (five if you count the code-shares). Because my flights were booked in such a way, no one really wanted to take ownership for rebooking my DC to Doha flight.

Care to read through the drama? Read on!

My first flight home was on United from Atlanta to DC – this flight was still operational. The flight after that was a United code-share flight on Qatar Airways (QA) from DC to Doha. This flight was cancelled because the previous day’s flight was cancelled and rescheduled for the day of my departure. Both of these flights were flight number QR52, so QA was having some difficulty showing in their system that QR52 was cancelled and operational at the same time. My first call was to United who sent me to QA because the flight wasn’t showing as cancelled. QA confirmed it was cancelled but said because it was a United code-share that they would have to re-book. United then tells me Continental owned the ticket since one of my arrival flights was on Continental. As a side story, Continental basically DUMPED on their customers August 28th by having a message on their 1-800# indicating that they were not able to accept calls. Moving on, I escalate my call at United and speak with Liz, who after sitting herself on hold with QA for 60+ min. tells me that the time she’s spending on hold is taking away from her United customers. Clearly I was not being recognized as a United customer even though their own Hurricane Irene policy dictated that they would re-book code-share passengers. When I asked Liz’s last name for my records, I was told “and why is that relevant” and I was quickly put back on hold. Eventually Liz tells me she can re-book my itinerary for a day later, which is not satisfactory for my connection to the Maldives and at this point in the day there were 4+ flights from Atlanta to Houston where I could catch the Houston to Doha flight. Another failed called to QA and I start two more calls – one to United and one to Continental.

At some point during my 6+ hours on the phone I tell Kevin to just go to the Maldives without me and I’d join him the following day. Well, my darling husband joins in on the re-book mission from Doha! A few failed attempts to Doha-based QA customer service and then he attempts US United customer service. We are trading emails back and forth while both sitting on hold and I get a message that his hold time is estimated at 60+ min. and a later email that he has about 10 min. left in him to deal with this. Bless those 10 min.! Through a miraculous alignment of stars, Kev caught the right agent (Tara) that fixed our issue. I get an email from Kev saying he for sure has me on the Atlanta-Houston flight but the Houston-Doha flight was unknown. His email says “if you are at your parent’s house in 5 minutes… you likely have missed your window.” I had spent most of my on-hold time doing laundry and packing the suitcases, so I zip every thing up and blow outta the house like a tornado. I hit a three lane closure on the freeway which only adds to my stress level. Then I realize I am that crazy person that has 4 bags and realizes that she cannot push them all together (with no carts in sight). Thank you, random Tony, for helping me in my time of need! At Atlanta they printed out my tickets all the way through Doha and I was riding on cloud nine. I incredibly made it home just an hour later than previously planned.

I don’t know how he did it, but my awesome husband really came through on this one and I will likely never live it down. I also owe a shout out to my mom for being on her iPad at the crack of dawn and my dad for making me a Benton’s BLT while I sat on hold like a mad woman.