I’m currently writing this in the Dallas airport while I wait for my flight to Pittsburgh to connect with Rain and start our tour. I hadn’t really blogged or written in a while (and most of the posts where I do write, I write this, very conscious of my lack of. Really, I’m just reminding myself that I should write more often) but I did need to get a few things off my chest during this experience because this was stupid.
DON’T FLY! Just DON’T DO IT! Last year, in 2022, my uncle had passed away and we had planned for a family reunion and celebration of life for him in July. I had just started my new job so I didn’t have the vacation time to take many days off. My father had planned to drive from California to Iowa. We had done that drive once before a number of years ago and it was a big experience between the two of us and traveling on the road let us explore and take our time. So I’m certain he wanted to duplicate that again. Now, he’s retired and I’m still working to survive. You know how it goes. Anywho, my plan at the time was to fly out on Friday night, get to my AirBnB, visit the family on Saturday and fly back on Sunday. My first flight on Friday was first delayed slightly which meant I would miss my connecting flight so my first flight out of Sacramento was changed to Saturday morning. With the new plan I would barely make it in to Iowa, miss the celebration service, but still connect with family and fly back on Sunday. So I fly out Saturday morning and get to Phoenix, AZ, and check the terminal to find what gate I need to get to and find that my flight to Iowa was cancelled. Just cancelled. I turn on my phone to a slew of text messages stating this. I find a customer service booth and try to suss out options. They tell me that my flight to Iowa was moved to Monday. This news was delivered matter-of-factly, as if I would just go home, watch some TV and return happily on Monday. I let them know of my family situation and they couldn’t give any viable option to get to Iowa by that afternoon, so I tell them to just send me back to Sacramento. I essentially spent $1100 to visit the Phoenix gift shop.
“But did you get a refund?” everyone asks when I tell this story (which has been a lot while on this trip so far, which I’ll get to), and not really. I booked the flight through Expedia, so when I went to the airline to change, they didn’t like that and said I should have called them first (WELL!) and then my flight back and hotel didn’t refund much either. Cancellations had fees and deductions. I basically have $50 credit with some airline I don’t even remember the name of.
So that story was DON’T FLY 2022.
I’m still saying DON’T FLY 2023 now. Tuesday morning, as I was getting ready to head to the airport I get the text that my flight had been delayed. I send a screenshot of this message to Rain with the ominously added, “And it begins.”
My flight was originally supposed to leave at 2:20, but it didn’t leave until 4:21. This did of course mean I would miss my connecting flight to Pittsburgh, so they offered a hotel stay while in Dallas.
We arrive in Dallas and get a few misleading answers as to where to get our hotel vouchers and during this search around the airport, we find we’re not alone. Hundreds of people are all in line waiting for hotel and meal vouchers. I actually needed to get to my bag from the baggage claim as I would need some items if I were to stay the night. Baggage claim was on the opposite side of where everyone was in line so after locating my bag I hunted for a customer service counter to ask for my vouchers.
Managed to find someone that could help and got my vouchers for taxi, food, and hotel. We were then guided out to an area where taxi’s would meet us to take us to the Sleep Inn next to Six Flags Dallas.
While in the car and when I arrive at the hotel, I’m finding more people had been on many differing flights, each having a story where they had delays after delays and should be in wherever-the-fuck-but-not-six-flags-dallas. At this point I was going to exploit this for how much I could, which included ordering room service because they don’t have my fucking name. They have the airlines name. But room service was closed so my options were Denny’s, Circle K, or ordering a pizza (which everyone else seemed to be doing). With the time differences coming from California to Texas, we went from 8 o’clock to after 10, pretty quickly so my options for food was definitely getting narrower. I walked to the Circle K to pickup a beer and a few microwave hamburgers, which plans to undress fully in my hotel room and eat these burgers while watching Adult Swim.
Well the hotel didn’t fucking have Adult Swim either.
I slept very roughly and at a certain point in the morning, 3:40-ish, to be more specific, I got up, took a quick shower and hopped on the first taxi to the airport just to get out of there.
In all, this rant about this travel is really an anti-capitalism rant. The entire time we were being shuffled around everyone is asking, “why did this happen?” and I wanted to just scream “capitalism!”
Everything I went through today, every corner cut which led to another human experience disaster, was to fatten up the ceo’s pockets. Now I’m curious how much the American Airlines CEO made this last year… Let’s look real quick.
13.2 billion dollars in revenue. Some of that could really have gone back to bettering the customer experience, not chiseling away at it.
And I’m honestly not an economics person, like, at all. Nothing I do or make is for any profit. I just do my work, save up money, and do creative things with that money. The economy in America never made any sense to me anyways, so I’m totally fine adopting socialists perspectives. After reading how other countries are doing things much better, it’s becoming more and more exhausting to live in America. Too many of my friends and family are so close to being homeless, or ARE homeless. This shouldn’t happen.
Anyways, don’t fly!