The Flight From Hell Part 3: Serenity Now!

This is the final installment of a three-part rant about our flight from hell. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Here’s how part two ended:

One of the jetways pulled away from the plane. I looked at Sher and said “This flight is not leaving without us.” and he said “we have to close the doors at 10:30”. It was 10:20.

And that’s when I lost it. I demanded that they get us on that plane because, after all, this was not our fault but THEIRS, beginning with our delayed UNITED flight out of Portland. I cried and, yes, may have used the “f” word a couple of times. I was angry. If you ask my husband he’ll tell you how much it takes for me to lose my temper with someone in customer service. I know that most things are out of their control and I am very understanding and calm in most cases, but this was too much.

Nina proceeded to then provide excuses – how really it was Air New Zealand’s fault because they didn’t release the ticket (remember that it was a United person who transferred them in Portland) and that there was nothing that they could do. At one point when I began explaining exactly what had happened, she started to interrupt me. I put up my had in a stop gesture and said “No! Do not interrupt me. You need to listen to what I have to say first before you give anymore excuses. Then she told me that we would likely have to buy a new ticket for Samuel.

HUH? Why would WE need to buy a new ticket? Wouldn’t you comp us the ticket? I mean we BOUGHT a ticket, I had the receipt in my hand.

And Nina replied, “no one gets anything for free.”

Yes, she actually said that to me as I stood there at 10:30pm with my husband and our two small children who had been traveling now for 8 hours, one of whom was visibly upset because he was missing the chance to see his grandparents, and as we watched our plane pull away from the gate.

It was a low moment. It got even lower when Nina began to questions me about how I purchased the tickets. Did I buy them all at the same time? Did I confirm the flight? The answer to both questions was YES and I had the confirmation in my hand to prove it (tip: always take your printed ticket confirmation). Oh, and then she proceeded to deny us any hotel vouchers because it was an Air New Zealand problem.

Thankfully one of the men behind the counter (I think was ground control because he was wearing an orange vest) was kind and understanding. He listened to what I had to say and he empathized with our situation. When I expressed disgust at the fact that we might have to buy another ticket, he said that if they gave tickets to everyone who experienced a problem then they would be giving away tickets all the time. I understand that is reasonable for weather problems, acts of god etc., but not for tickets that we have actually purchased and then were sabotaged by the airline itself. Nevertheless, he listened, and at this point that was what I needed more than anything because this screw up was not our fault and yet here I stood at the mercy of these people who were blaming everyone but themselves.

The same man also said to us (in front of Nina) that of course we would receive a hotel voucher and some food vouchers – though we only received three. Samuel still didn’t count because, well, he didn’t exist despite the fact that he was running around the gate lounge with a bad case of exhaustion-induced loopiness. I think this man may have saved Nina’s life.

There was nothing we could do at that point except ensure that we had at least three seats on the following night’s flight (the next Air New Zealand flight wasn’t for two days). I insisted on a row with a spare seat in the middle – I figured we deserved at least that and apparently complementary upgrades are not their policy.

And so we headed back to the hotel with instructions to check in the next day at around 5pm to see if the situation was resolved or if we’d be on the hook for a new infant ticket. Worst case was that we had to buy another ticket but we’d still be flying out the next day. I couldn’t help thinking that it would have been good to have known that before the plane left. We may have been able to make it after all.

Our hotel was the Doubletree in beautiful Burlingame. We finally fell into bed at about midnight and had a restless sleep until 9am. Our late check out meant that we could make the best of the buffet breakfast, including saving a few pieces of fruit and other goodies for the day ahead. The waitress at the hotel restaurant took pity on us and looked the other way as we stashed a few bananas and peanut butter sandwiches into our bags.

At 1pm we checked out and headed back to the airport – a full 9.5 hours before our flight was due to leave. To look on the bright side, if you’re going to be stuck in an airport for that length of time then you want it to be an airport like SF. They have fishtanks, a MOMA store and even a museum to help pass the time. It could have been worse – we could have been stuck at LAX.

At 4pm I went up to the United check in counter where they told me that they had been trying to rectify the problem with Air New Zealand for a couple of hours without any luck. It seemed we would have to buy a ticket after all. Of course getting a price on a ticket would take another 20 minutes, in addition to the time they had spent trying to obtain a price the previous evening. If United staff can’t get what they need from their own customer service then what chance do actual customers have.

Grand total out of pocket: $150. Not as much as I had expected but still $150 more than we should have had to pay and something that could have been rectified the night before if they had been able to determine the problem more quickly.

We managed to board the plane that evening at 10:30pm without extra drama except for the screams of an overly- drunk Australian at a neighboring gate who freaked out when the dogs sniffed at his bag and was then handcuffed and taken away by police. Thankfully it had no impact on our flight.

After a very uncomfortable flight and a quick layover in Sydney, we arrived in Melbourne at 10:30am on Saturday morning – a full 24 hours after we were due to arrive.

We proceeded through immigration but there was to be one last burn. Somehow United had managed to misplace one of our bags and it happened to be the one that contained all of my and Kei’s clothes. So there I was in Melbourne, standing at a desk just on the other side of the doors to my family who had no way of knowing what was happening, with the prospect of continuing to wear the same clothes that I had now been wearing for 48 hours. Oh, and Kei and I had the Hen’s and Buck’s (Bachelor and Bachelorette) parties to attend that evening.

As it turned out, Kei had packed just one pair of my jeans in the kids’ bag and I had a shirt in the suit bag so all I needed was a pair of shoes which I bought in a quick 5 minute shopping trip on our way out for the evening. Kei borrowed some clothes from my younger brother – not really his style but he looked good nonetheless. I ended up bowing out of the festivities early due to exhaustion but was proud of myself for making it to 11pm.

On Sunday I made a number of phone calls and our bag was finally located in Brisbane and returned to Melbourne by 4pm. It seems that the person who checked our bags and transferred us to the United flight in Portland had failed to change the tickets on our bags correctly. If you’ll remember, she made a point of telling us how she would have to do it by hand. I guess she became distracted on the walk down and missed one.

Our flight home on Air New Zealand was fairly uneventful (and much more comfortable) except for the fact that the United flight leaving on the same day was cancelled and so our plane was completely booked thanks to the extra passengers they picked up. Seems United had to have the last laugh.

At the end of the day, though, we had a great, busy, fun visit. I will have some more photos to share of visits to wineries, easter egg hunts and of course a wedding in the coming days. I’m sure you’ll need some lighter entertainment after this rant, but thanks for letting me get it off my chest. I start the official letter-writing this week.

The Flight From Hell Part 2: So Close

This is the second part of a story sharing details of our flight from hell. Part 1 can be read here.

When I left you, we were finally in the air and on our way to San Francisco to meet a connecting United Airlines flight to Australia. Although it was not the Air New Zealand flight that I had dreamed of (and paid for), at least we finally en route and breathing a cautious sigh of relief.

When we boarded the plane I anxiously asked the flight attendant if we were safe to make our flight. We had a couple of hours up our sleeve, but I was being extra cautious due to the fact that we had to transport two small children to the international terminal. “Yes”, she said, “plenty of time”.

And she was right. We touched down at around 9:00pm and made it to the gate for our international flight by around 9:15.

On arrival, I immediately went up to the desk to make sure we were all checked in and see if there was any chance that we had a spare seat for Samuel in our row. I handed over our ticket confirmation and passports and the lady behind the desk proceeded to look us up on the computer. After spending a few minutes typing on the keyboard she said that there was a small problem. For some reason the computer wouldn’t allow her to add the infant ticket to the check in. Not a problem – she would have someone who had more experience come over and help her.

Soon there were three people all trying to fix this baffling problem. Why is the computer not allowing them to check in the infant? One of the customer service people looked at me and said “we’ll work this out soon and give you your boarding passes. Sorry about the delay but I don’t think we’ve had this problem before.” In the meantime she started getting our gate check ticket ready for the stroller.

At this point I wasn’t concerned. Why should I be? I had a ticket confirmation in my hands and three of the four boarding passes that we needed to board the plane. But then after about 30 minutes during which they pounded on the computer seemingly doing the same thing over and over again, they determined the source of the problem. Apparently Samuel – and infant who is not able to travel on his own – had been checked into the Air New Zealand flight and his ticket was therefore not available to be checked into the United flight. Huh?

Next step was to call Air New Zealand and have them transfer the ticket. Easy, right? Not really. They called the customer service number and, without sharing the time sensitivity, sat on hold for 10 minutes.

That’s when they started boarding the plane and I started to become very concerned.

Then they paged me to the desk. Now, keep in mind that I had been standing there for a full 45 minutes at this point, but the person checking visas seemed to be unaware that I was standing right next to him. And then they paged me AGAIN. It seems there were three bags standing beside the plane that they were unable to load because the passengers were not checked in. Well, at least our bags were ready to board.

It was at this time, after most of the passengers had boarded the plane, that the customer service director came over and tried to help. From the moment she opened her mouth I could tell that she had very little respect for anyone. She got on the phone with the Air New Zealand person – who had since taken them off hold and was trying to fix the problem – and spoke to them in such a condescending way that I immediately put her in that little box of people that I do not want to deal with. Let’s call her Nina (not her real name, although I wish I could remember it).

So the situation was this: Air New Zealand said they were not able to transfer the ticket because some error had been made when we were moved to the United flight (in Portland, by a United representative). They were not able to let us board the plane because Samuel would not be on the flight manifest without being checked in. They were not able to check us in because Air New Zealand could not transfer the ticket. And around it went.

By this time the gate lounge was empty and everyone had boarded the plane. My last hope was someone name Sher would would come down and make the call on what to do next. Well, Sher came down to the gate and stood around with the others, equally baffled and apparently unable to do anything.

And then one of the jetways pulled away from the plane. I looked at Sher and said “This flight is not leaving without us.” and he said “we have to close the doors at 10:30”. It was 10:20.

I’ll be back with part 3, the final chapter, tomorrow…

A Quick Interlude

Before I continue with my “Flight From Hell” rant, I present this small moment of peace from our trip (spoiler alert: we did finally make it there) and my entry for this week’s I ♥ Faces collage challenge. One of the key things I learned from this trip is that I should ALWAYS make time to stop at a store and buy chalk. This activity kept the boys occupied for hours and my parents were able to enjoy a constantly changing piece of artwork on their concrete driveway for our entire stay, dominated by Star Wars scenes/characters and a full airport blueprint. It seems my children are now more familiar with airports than ever.

Part 2 of the “Flight From Hell” coming tomorrow.

Home Again..

We returned home about 7:30 last night after a marathon flight from Australia. Thankfully the return trip was a lot less eventful that our trip over (more on that soon). We’ve now had a chance to catch up on some sleep but I think we’re all going to suffer jetlag for a few days. Thomas finally went to sleep at around 12:30am after declaring many times that “NOTHING was working” to get him to sleep last night. (Turns out that singing “Hey Jude” helps. Must be the repetition of na na naaa nanana.) He woke the rest of us up at 11:30am. I’m a little nervous about bedtime tonight but hoping that the long sleep was more catching up than time adjustment.

You can judge by the lack of blog posts that internet access during our visit was not ideal – in fact I was completely offline for the last four days (gasp! horror!). Actually it was a nice break, but I am now ready to catch up on the more than 1000 blogs in my reader, many facebook messages and, of course, start posting on here again.

Now I just need to find a little time to download pics of our trip, including the very important photos from my brother Ben’s wedding. Needless to say it was beautiful and I basically cried from the moment I saw my new sister-in-law walk out in her dress to the very late ride home in the taxi to the hotel. What can I say? Weddings make me emotional (as does Oprah. I blame the new hormones I grew when I gave birth to my children).

Side note: I caught up on Lost last night before going to bed at around 2am so comments on key plot points are now allowed.

I’ll be back with more photos soon but in the meantime I’ll share some P365 pics that I took before our trip.

A few days before our trip I went on a mummy-son date with Thomas to see an original production of “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus” performed by the Northwest Children’s Theater. We caught a free early read-through of the play a couple of months ago so we were eager to see the fully-costumed version. It was a LOT of fun and I hope they are able to take the show on the road. Of course photos were not allowed in the theatre so I had to make do with a pic of the beautiful building. The theatre itself is over 120 years old and is just stunning.

Thomas wanted to take a little time for some drawing on the steps outside the theatre before we left. Part of the play required us to learn how to draw the pigeon and Thomas wanted to practice while it was still fresh in his mind.

We all went out for dinner on the Sunday night (starting our vacation early) and I broke out the wide angle lens. I rarely use this lens mainly because I am too lazy to change from the 50mm. Turns out that I miss the wonderfully distorted portraits that I can get with the wide angle. Must remind myself to switch lenses more often.

I’m also apparently to lazy to wipe Samuel’s mouth.

One of the last nights before our trip is well summed up with this photo – frantic and fast. I’m not sure if there will ever be a time when I find myself prepared for an overseas trip days in advance of our departure. I was doing laundry to the last moment, dropping something off at the office (and leaving two of our passports there – LONG, traumatic story that was part of our eventful trip over) and shoving things into bags almost as we walked out the door. I’m dreaming of the day when the kids can do their own packing or, at the very least, keep themselves entertained while I do it for them.

So tomorrow we get back to reality – school, daycare and work. I’ll be back to post more after the jetlag lifts and I am able to emerge from a monsterous pile of laundry.

Random Things I Love Right Now

It’s random Friday so I thought I’d share just a few of the things that I am enjoying on this sunny Portland day.

1. Painting

Excited that the inside of my house is finally being painted – almost two years after we finished our renovation. We bit the bullet and hired someone to do it for us. Of course I am in charge of choosing the paint colours which we all know is the hardest part. Deep red for the dining room and upstairs feature wall, neutral taupe for other walls and the hallway downstairs. I am stuck on the bathroom though. Right now it’s this hideous shade of lavendar with a yelow ceiling so anything will be an improvement. I am considering deep brown alongside the white wainscoating, trim and ceiling. Suggestions welcome.

2. I’m on a Horse

I don’t often watch the advertisements on TV (thanks TIVO) but this one grabbed my attention while I was watching Lost with the girls on Tuesday night. Of course the irony is that when I think of Old Spice, I am always reminded of the time when my grandmother sent me to the grocery store to pick some up for my grandfather’s birthday. I was about 16 years old and and my grandfather must have been in his 70s. A far cry from the man in this commercial.

4. Speaking of Lost…

It is officially my favourite television show – and made even better this year with our weekly girl get togethers. So much fun to be able to discuss events as they are happening – and with wine and chocolate.

3. Still the man

LOVE Robbie Wiliams. He’s celebrating his 20th year in music this year which makes me feel incredibly old. My teenage crush has grown into an adult one.

5. Spring

It feels like it is here already. 50 degree temperatures in Portland and we’re already seeing a few flowers blooming.

6. Online grocery shopping

Placed my order last night and will pick it up tomorrow morning. LOVE that!

7. Upcoming Adventures

This winter has been tough. It has felt long, dark and busy so I am looking forward to few fun advantures in the next couple of months. A girls weekend, a weekend at the coast and a trip to Australia are all on the horizon and they could not come soon enough.

8. The weekend

Just a few hours away. It will be a busy one, but hopefully productive with a little fun thrown into the mix. Hope yours is a good one.

Airport Adventures: Monday Mosaic

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to San Francisco for the day. For the record, my 10 minute meeting in the city resulted in two new passports by the end of that very same week. 4 days to obtain two brand new passports. Gotta love that Aussie efficiency.

Most of my time in San Francisco was spent in the airport due to a chronic fear of missing my flight. I can’t remember the last time I was able to just hang out in an airport without having to occupy two small children. For the record it’s overrated, especially when the airport is Oakland. I spent most of my time working and then decided to wander around and take a few photos. Warning: airport photos give me license to be creative with post-processing. 🙂

Views of SF: Mosaic Monday

Just made it in under the wire for my Mosaic Monday post. I have been meaning to post a few photos from my quick trip to San Francisco last week. In fact my trip was so quick that I didn’t leave Market street the entire time I was downtown. I was afraid that if I veered too far from the train station that I would get lost and miss my flight home. I’m a little neurotic about flying so I have to be there at least a couple of hours in advance. It’s not that I am afraid of flying – just afraid that I will miss my flight.

Oh, and I REALLY REALLY can’t wait to see Alice in Wonderland which will explain one of the images below.

Lost Lake… A Few Finds

Lost lake was a dream for taking photographs. I adore looking at journalistic-style photography – being able to read a whole story in a look or expression is amazing to me. And, while I may never travel to Africa or Morocco (although I still have hope that one day…), my group of friends have become my own private source of journalistic photography.

Usually when we get together I have only an hour or two to capture some great photos AND actually have a couple of conversations. The great thing about Lost Lake was that I was presented with the gift of an entire weekend.

Here are some of my favourite captured moments from the weekend.

I wish I knew what was so funny.

Surprisingly, I had no concerns sending my child out on a crowded Kayak into the middle of an enormous Lake. Good thing I have photographic proof to remind me of just how relaxed I was on the trip.

Such a natural smile – AND two cute babies. What’s not to love about this photo.

Conversations over breakfast.

Boys with their Daddies.

And more boys with with more Daddies.

And just boys on their own, concentrating deeply on consuming a slice of watermelon.

This one screams American Gothic to me.

And, finally, arguably my favorite shot from the weekend. The shadow off to the side makes me feel like I am peeking into a secret moment. The lighting is beautiful and I caught the shot right before she tried to blow a bubble.

Moments.

Morning, Noon and Night

I have already mentioned that we went on a quick trip to Lost Lake with friends. I even posted just a few of the hundreds of photos that I took here.

One of the traps of going to such a beautiful location as a photographer, is that it is just so tempting to take hundreds and hundreds of photos of the SAME THING. The view of Mt Hood was incredibly beautiful from the lake that I just couldn’t help myself. It took me many days to narrow it down to a few favourites.

I was up early on Saturday (the kids made sure of that), so I went for a walk and spotted the mountain peeking from behind the trees.

And then when I walked a little further up the path…

The morning reflection in the lake was incredibly beautiful (and the weather was perfect!).

But then I found that as each hour went by, the view of the mountain would change and, of course, I had to capture each moment on camera.

Especially this one with Kei kayaking in the foreground.

And then evening hit. The kids were both in bed (a miracle) and I was able to head back to the lake just in time to capture a few moments as the sun went down.

Under a pink sky.

Then the sky grew darker and I was able to catch this final parting shot before everything went blurry.

So Many Photos: Lost Lake Part 1

I’ve started editing my photos from Lost Lake. I think have made it about a third of the way into the 400 or so that I took that weekend.

Here is a small sample… Part 1… The children.

This one is my favourite but I’m not sure why…

This poor little guy was hit in the head with a frisbee right before I took this photo. I am ashamed to say that I took the opportunity to catch a photo with the little tear below his eye. But how sweet is this photo?