Fear of Flying

"I like terra firma. The more firma, the less terra!"
George S. Kaufman

Actually, I'm a good flyer. No fear here. The DH worked for United, Republic, Piedmont & USAir at various times during the course of his IT career, so we logged a lot of non-revenue miles when the kids were little. We took home school field trips to DC and hit as many major aquariums as we could. The girls had passports from the time they were 6 and 8 so we could take them to Europe.

Then later, the DH qualified for his private pilot's license and we had a Cessna 182 for a while. We loved weaving through mountain passes and zipping over the plains. It was always an adventure. 

Flying is great. I can't wait to see the earth fall away as our long metal tube with wings takes to the skies. I'm not afraid to fly.

What I am afraid of is airline schedules and policies and, after the events of this morning, with good reason. 

The DH was doing a last minute look-see on all our reservations for our upcoming cruise to Norway:

Pre-flight Hotel in St. Louis: check  

Pre-cruise Hotel in NYC: check (We booked this through Cunard, so transfers to and from the airport, hotel & port are included before and after the cruise.)

Flight documents: ........ wait a minute . .... something's not.... hey! They can't do that!

When he pulled up our record locator to print out our flights from STL to NYC on American Airlines, the DH was shocked to find out we'd been bumped from first class to coach and the times of our flights had been changed so that our return flight left NYC a couple of minutes after noon--way too early to make the connection from a cruise ship that might possibly come to port late. 

Perhaps I should begin by saying we purchased fully refundable First Class tickets in January. We travel in that category because I need to have a plug in at my seat in case I run out of battery life for Herkimer (my portable O2 concentrator.) A plane at altitude is like being at 8000 ft of elevation. For most folks, that's no problem. My oxygen sats drop into the 70's without supplemental O2 in that situation. 

Believe me, folks, that is zero fun. Been there, done that, seriously don't want it to happen again. 

Making a connection is...a major slog.

So First Class is a must for us. And if it's available, so is a non-stop flight. We schlep along some extra medical equipment--two portable O2 concentrators (I have had a POC stop working without warning on me, so I travel with a spare) and a bi-pap machine--along with the regular carry-on stuff most folks have. So trying to make a connection between flights is a three ring circus.

A slow motion circus.

After spending over an hour with American's long-suffering customer service people, who couldn't offer a reasonable explanation for why the downgrades and changes had been made in our reservation, we cancelled the flights for a full refund. We were told to expect it to take 10 days before the credit shows up on our CC. Then the DH bought non-stop First Class flights on Delta that will do very nicely.

Provided they don't change things before we go too!

Anyway, the point of this post is: 

ALWAYS CHECK YOUR TRAVEL DOCUMENTS AHEAD OF TIME. EARLY & OFTEN!

PS. I suspect the grounding of American's fleet of 737's is behind the changes, and I can't fault the airline for that.What I do fault them for is that they did not notify us of the changes to our reservation. If the DH weren't a detail-oriented guy, we could've had a nasty surprise waiting for us at the airport. We might've even missed our flight.