New York
Decided to hijack my Japan blog for my NY experiences. Enjoy:
Woke up at 7:30am to get ready to leave by 8 for my 10:40 flight. Went to the original Dwarf House Chick Fil A for a nice diner breakfast. There was some sort of corporate thing with lots of manager types for some reason. Anyway got to the airport and for some reason two lanes in the drop off section in front of ticketing and check ins were coned off so there was a bit of traffic. After saying my final farewells I checked in at the kiosk and tried to check my one bag. Alas! It was 75 lbs which would have cost $175 to take with me so I attempted to shift the weight a little into my carry ons. Got it down to 67 but still not good enough.
Took out a bunch of clothes out of my big bag to get it down to 50 lbs and some people behind me were kind enough to give me one of their cloth reusable grocery bags to shove my extra clothes into which I would then use as my carry on and check my other smaller bag I was originally going to carry on. Well... Went to the kiosk and tried to check an additional bag and got the message that it was now too late to check bags being 10am at that point.
So basically I'm screwed at this point having too many bags. Someone redirects me to the checkin line to see if I can book another flight. The guy is helpful but can't do a lot for me as all the other flights to NY are overbooked. He estimates that I won't be flying out anytime soon and shouldn't have been mucking around with he weight of my bags. Anyway, somehow he keeps scanning and sees that there is one possible seat available for the 1:40pm flight but since it was only 10:15 he couldn't try to get it until 10:40, being three hours before the flight. Asks me to wait to the side until then and he'd try to get me the seat right on the dot. Maybe ten minutes later the guy is leaving, sees me and remembers that he was going to try to get me on the 1:40pm flight.
Goes there, gets ready to book me, 10:40am on the dot rolls around and he tries to book me. Bam! Taken. Someone had grabbed it before us. In fact that someone was the person two people down from me and an angry New Yorker who seemed to be refusing to pay the $50 fee (he claimed that he got there on time for his flight, but he got there 30 min before the flight, which is too late). So the lady helping him just gives it to me! The guy tries to put me on the flight, but oh no! it didn't work! Apparently they somehow had it set that I was on the original flight I was supposed to be on so it wouldn't let them rebook me. That took another call to the gate to get it fixed and he finally got me the flight.
So I got the 1:40pm flight. Everything's fine, I board and things are going ok. Until the pilot comes on and says "Folks, I've got some bad news. There's a storm going from Philly to New York and they're not letting any planes come in to any of the NY airports. We've got 50 min of fuel left and the update on the situation's coming in 40 min, so we're going to circle around a little while above Washington DC." 40 minutes pass and they're still not letting anyone land in NY, so we end up having to land in DC to refuel and wait out the storm. We do a "hard stop" where we don't even pull up to a gate and just sit there for a while (maybe an hour). Finally, we get the clearance to go and take off again after waiting in line for other planes who had to land too.
End up getting to Laguardia airport at around 7pm. 6 hours after I was originally supposed to be getting there if I had gotten the first flight. But that's cool... whatever... I had to reschedule one of my sublet viewings, but at least I have all my luggage for a reasonable set of fees. Oh wait... no I don't... I wait at the baggage claim until I see the same set of bags over and over again. No new ones coming out... just typical... After a while, finally ended up going to other end of the terminal where the "oversized bags" were supposed to go and finally found both of my bags. What they were doing there, I'll never know. Then I got a cab, drove the mile or so to my friend's apt and got in. Hooray for air travel!
Woke up at 7:30am to get ready to leave by 8 for my 10:40 flight. Went to the original Dwarf House Chick Fil A for a nice diner breakfast. There was some sort of corporate thing with lots of manager types for some reason. Anyway got to the airport and for some reason two lanes in the drop off section in front of ticketing and check ins were coned off so there was a bit of traffic. After saying my final farewells I checked in at the kiosk and tried to check my one bag. Alas! It was 75 lbs which would have cost $175 to take with me so I attempted to shift the weight a little into my carry ons. Got it down to 67 but still not good enough.
Took out a bunch of clothes out of my big bag to get it down to 50 lbs and some people behind me were kind enough to give me one of their cloth reusable grocery bags to shove my extra clothes into which I would then use as my carry on and check my other smaller bag I was originally going to carry on. Well... Went to the kiosk and tried to check an additional bag and got the message that it was now too late to check bags being 10am at that point.
So basically I'm screwed at this point having too many bags. Someone redirects me to the checkin line to see if I can book another flight. The guy is helpful but can't do a lot for me as all the other flights to NY are overbooked. He estimates that I won't be flying out anytime soon and shouldn't have been mucking around with he weight of my bags. Anyway, somehow he keeps scanning and sees that there is one possible seat available for the 1:40pm flight but since it was only 10:15 he couldn't try to get it until 10:40, being three hours before the flight. Asks me to wait to the side until then and he'd try to get me the seat right on the dot. Maybe ten minutes later the guy is leaving, sees me and remembers that he was going to try to get me on the 1:40pm flight.
Goes there, gets ready to book me, 10:40am on the dot rolls around and he tries to book me. Bam! Taken. Someone had grabbed it before us. In fact that someone was the person two people down from me and an angry New Yorker who seemed to be refusing to pay the $50 fee (he claimed that he got there on time for his flight, but he got there 30 min before the flight, which is too late). So the lady helping him just gives it to me! The guy tries to put me on the flight, but oh no! it didn't work! Apparently they somehow had it set that I was on the original flight I was supposed to be on so it wouldn't let them rebook me. That took another call to the gate to get it fixed and he finally got me the flight.
So I got the 1:40pm flight. Everything's fine, I board and things are going ok. Until the pilot comes on and says "Folks, I've got some bad news. There's a storm going from Philly to New York and they're not letting any planes come in to any of the NY airports. We've got 50 min of fuel left and the update on the situation's coming in 40 min, so we're going to circle around a little while above Washington DC." 40 minutes pass and they're still not letting anyone land in NY, so we end up having to land in DC to refuel and wait out the storm. We do a "hard stop" where we don't even pull up to a gate and just sit there for a while (maybe an hour). Finally, we get the clearance to go and take off again after waiting in line for other planes who had to land too.
End up getting to Laguardia airport at around 7pm. 6 hours after I was originally supposed to be getting there if I had gotten the first flight. But that's cool... whatever... I had to reschedule one of my sublet viewings, but at least I have all my luggage for a reasonable set of fees. Oh wait... no I don't... I wait at the baggage claim until I see the same set of bags over and over again. No new ones coming out... just typical... After a while, finally ended up going to other end of the terminal where the "oversized bags" were supposed to go and finally found both of my bags. What they were doing there, I'll never know. Then I got a cab, drove the mile or so to my friend's apt and got in. Hooray for air travel!
posted by Christopher Luu at 10:27 PM
4 Comments:
Hopefully this means a good night's sleep? Eh?
I'll miss you! It's gonna be so weird going to screenings w/o you. I know how badly you wanted into BandSlam.
Lol you didn't weigh your baggage at home before the flight? Hmm but then again if it weren't for my mom i wouldn't do that either. All's well ends well at least :)
Awesome, some blog posts after almost 3 non blog-worthy years! 2 years if you count memories. Keep writing.
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