why we are driving next time

I thought I would be clever and fly out of Chicago, so we wouldn't have to deal with possible flight delay at the South Bend airport and miss the flight in Chicago.

We drove to Chicago Thursday night and did a Park/Sleep/Fly thing, where we could keep our car parked at the hotel we stayed at the night before the flight and catch a shuttle back to it when we returned. That all worked out well except the hotel was pretty lame (a comfort inn near the airport.)

We got to the airport at 6:00 a.m. Friday morning for an 8:30 flight, my email confirmation said US Airways. We went to the US Airways kiosk, it said we had to call, All The Phones Were Out of Order! Then we stood in line to talk to someone, only to get to the front of the line and have the US Airways person say that the flight was actually going to be on a United plan, so we needed to run over to the United terminal.

Then we had to stand in line there for another 30 minutes. The ticket agent confirmed that we did have a reservation but she had a difficult time finding our ticket... what does that mean?

Due to extreme weather conditions, lightning, golf ball sized hail, etc we were delayed at the airport until the evening! This including getting on the airplane and then having to get off again because the pilots were due to get off their shift.

We finally got to Phoenix, but all the flights into Reno, were overbooked with LONG standby lists. And for some reason, if you miss your connecting flight due to weather US Airways put you at the bottom of their incomprehensible priority list.

We didn't get on the one remaining flight to Reno that night.

We called Greyhound to see if we could take a bus - takes 24 hours to get from Phoenix to Reno by bus. We tried other airlines. We checked Amtrak. We looked into renting a car, I think the drive was something like 13 hours and it was already like 10:00 at night and we had been up since 5:00 a.m.

So we slept in the airport, hoping to get the earliest flight out to Reno.

Nope, over booked again.

Next flight, overbooked by 16 and another long standby list.

By this point Zoe, Pere and I had each had our own freak-out moments. It was no pretty. Plus we were running out of money, having to have eaten 5 meals plus snacks at the airport.

We talked to customer service at US Airways about our chances of getting to Reno. They were not good, Father's Day weekend, weather, and some big event in Reno was causing all kind of havok. Basically there was nothing they could do for us. No hotel voucher, no food voucher, no help on standby, no consideration for our circumstances of traveling with an 8 year old and only having a weekend in Reno. There was no way were could get to Reno until Sunday afternoon at the earliest, then we would be turning around and leaving Monday.

Eventually we decided to skip Reno and go right to Los Angeles, the next leg of our journey. Somehow we could easily catch the night flight to Los Angeles.

Fast Forward to Sunday the 28th. I had already tried to confirm our flight online but US Airways website said I needed to call. So I called and the woman working for US Airways said I needed to talk to a ticketed agent at the airport the day of my flight because, I was confirmed but they couldn't find my tickets. Again??

So Sunday morning I get to LAX an extra hour early. We stand in one line, they tell us to go to another, we stand in the other for 30 minutes, then the ticketing agent says, We Can't Help You. Again the flight was booked by US Airways but they were using a United plan so we had to go to the United terminal... on the other side of the airport. WTF!

We ran with all our luggage through the parking structure, I was SO mad.

We spent 40 minutes with a United ticketing agent while she was on the phone with US Airways trying to find our tickets. Finally she hung -up on them because they wouldn't help and just made the tickets herself.

Oh yeah, and when I originally called US Airways to add the Los Angeles flight because my mother-in-law was having emergency brain surgery the lady on the phone told me it would be an EXTRA CHARGE of $2000 for the flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles and changing the Phoenix to Chicago return trip for Los Angeles to Chicago. I said "that's a lot! Can you check and see if there is a cheaper flight? It doesn't have to be non-stop" The lady on the phone got annoyed with me and then said hold on, she left me on hold for awhile and then came back and said "No." Yet, I could see that there were several cheaper flights on their website.

Also, at every airport I was in line with dozens of extremely irate flyers who had been bumped because of US Airways policy to overbook their flights.

We figured out that it would have taken 28 hours to drive from South Bend to Reno. After 36 hours we were still in Phoenix. So, next time I am driving.