12:30 pm yesterday, I am meeting my Alla in Garfield heights, the location of her 5th pharmacy rotation, we say goodbye briefly, since this is a difficult rotation and now I am 10 minutes away from the airport, but it is too soon, I don’t want to wait at the airport, hate waiting.
So I go home and since everything is packed , I leave it that way and start to watch fame, The movie.
A colleague passes by on the high way next to my house , but it’s too early and I decline a ride.
I try to get a ride from someone else, but it’s too much out of their way (many people in the office this week , so I thought I’d have options). Usually I would just leave my car at the airport but this is a long trip, and would cost too much.
So I call a cab ask for 3 pm, they say they can’t so 3:15 it is, by this time the movie ends, and I already forgot about it (this movie is not going to leave forever).
The time for the cab comes and I go down to the lobby to wait. Our mailroom door is closed (this means the mail person is there) and I am now convinced that the green card is there waiting for me, but I cannot enter (the mail person is there, and it’s a federal offense to enter).
So I am asking loudly (in my head) for the mail dude to complete and for the cab to arrive. Nothing happens. I call the cab, and he is “on its way”. I am beginning to get nervous, since I don’t usually take cabs, and I see that if the cab will be late more, I will be late, but I hear that they are close and chose to wait (bad decision). The mail dudette is taking her time. I try to save precious seconds and go and wait on the curve. I call again, and the receptionist calls the cab guy who assures me that he is close. Finally at 3:35 the cab guy gets in (the mail person is still in the room- this is a big apartment building, so it’s a long process). The cab guy sounds relaxed, and I am already nervous.
He heads out and I am clearly nervous, and the guy (this is an airport shuttle service) tells me that I shouldn’t be worried , that the delta luggage cut of time is “like 5 minutes”. At this point I realized too late that the guy is clueless. No point in getting angry at him, he is dumb. 5 minutes… I tell him it’s 30 at the very best. 3:35 is not yet rush hour, but there is traffic. By flight is at 4:28, so I think that getting in by 3:58 and I might make it.
The minutes go by quickly, and he keeps reassuring me that I should not be nervous, that I should take a breath. All I want to do is take a stick, bash his head, take over the car and drive faster, but I subside my murderous rage and keep quiet. 3:58 passes by as we pull in to the airport. And 4:00 hits as I pull in to the curve. The guy suggests is use the faster curve side check in, and doesn’t see that the booth is empty. I rush to the delta counter and ……
Arrive too late.
The delta guy suggests that I let go of the luggage, while he looks for an alternative. There isn’t.
Another flight to Atlanta is over sold by 4 people..
With no other flights and flight time rapidly approaches, I say I will take a carryon of some stuff and leave the bag behind. I start unpacking right there at the counter. Then they say that they cannot do that (what they suggested just a few minutes earlier), I can’t even leave it on the side , and I cannot board.
Anxiety hits record high levels, since I have never missed a flight (I had them cancelled, over booked, late luggage, delayed, rerouted, but never missed).
The plane flew away and I remained on the ground. Air Alla came to pick me up. We didn’t give up and drove to Akron, the closest airport, in an attempt to fly to Atlanta from there. There was a flight from there to Atlanta, which was oversold, but I could use another airline, only if they would reroute my ticket. All the way I am on the phone with our travel agents and delta.
Btw , I am now at the airport its 3:59 (already checked in ) and getting this update from the delta.
Apparently JFK has road work, and they have only one landing strip, so the NY-CLE flight is delayed and this flight will leave an hour and plus late… great, did I mention how much I like waiting?
So I go to the counter, and verify, and get this, they knew JFK has problems, they had the same thing yesterday. My flight yesterday left 1 hour and 42 minutes late!!!!!!!. Which means they had plenty of time to get me and my luggage on the plain and have a ton of time to spare.
This is so frustrating.
So I left for Akron yesterday with air Alla. The travel agents says this was a special price so they cannot switch, refund, reroute, return and other recrap so I am basically rescrewed; this took an hour on the line with them. Delta was not much better. I cannot reroute, to Atlanta, even if I have a flight there and can make it.
What the hell is not re-routable. I guess its in the fine print, but when you book flight , you never notice this crap (refundable yes, re routable, hek no).
We make it to Akron and find the delta flight from there is oversold (just by 1 from here), but I cannot switch the flight…. Oooooooooooooooofff. We check other ways of getting to Israel, nothing cheap, in the end I have to reissue my ticket (there is a reissue fee of course) and change my ticket (a change fee , what else) and this is a higher rate on this flight (this is becoming too much bullshit for me fee). All ends with 520$ extra… by this time my nerves are shut, I realized I am beat by the system and move the flight up.
Ohh- in the reissue – they move the flight from Akron, back to Cleveland, somehow my origin changed to Akron (so they managed to reroute and unreRoutable system). While all this happened. The flight was sitting here at Cleveland and waiting.
So we drove away from Akron and had a nice dinner a P.F. chang’s with yummy banana + ice cream desert and went home where something shiny was waiting for me.
This is a pissed off blog, I hope I don’t have to many of those
I have many more update to make, will do them in another blog---keep the frustration with this one…btw its 4:21 and at this time, I am still expected to make the NY connection…. But I have no luck with Delta the “never leave the airport” airline.
p.s sorry Cindy, have a pleasant flight back home
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