Intro
This is not a technical post but I wanted to document it here anyways. It’s good to be king!
The details
I was with my family recently in Costa Rica. I booked the flights late and paid dearly as a result. In fact the best direct flights were sold out. I ended up relying on Orbitz for a “mutliple carriers” flight from Liberia to San Jose (SANSA Airlines, and then from San Jose to the US (United).
The flight to Liberia was a direct United flight, so no problems there. My phone did not work in Costa Rica so I only had sporadic Internet access at the occasional Wifi-enabled restaurant. My time-share place did not have a working Wifi, either.
We had this early flgiht out of Liberia Saturday so we booked a room at the Hilton airport hotel, which has all the conveniences you’d expect. So I catch up on email. There’s nothing recent from Orbitz. So I try to ensure we have boarding passes.
Imagine my horror when after finally managing to check the Orbitz record locator only one of the four passengers is listed!
Then I manage to find separate United Airlines record locators. Another of the four passengers has a unique record locator, and is booked straight through Liberia to the US. The two remaining passengers have record locators that only show the San Jose to US trip, but I can find no information whatsoever about the Liberia to San Jose leg!
I ask the Concierge to call Sansa. They are very helpful, by the way and they do that. But it’s after 5 PM and they’re closed until 8 AM tomorrow. The flight is scheduled to leave at 7:57 AM, however.
So I get back to the hotel room and tell my fmaily “It’s a cluster mess!” And I use Skype to call Orbitz from my cell phone. After 90 minutes or so on the call they agree that although I bought tickets for four people, only one now shows up in their system with their record locator. They say it is a problem with the airline who has taken over the ticket, United, or SANSA, and that I need to straighten this out with them.
well, we know we can’t call SANSA, so we try United. But it just happens to be when a giant blizzard had cancelled lots of flights in the previous days. First I am on hold for 45 minutes and then dropped without warning. Then I cannot get back through at all.
We make contingent plans to take a private car service to San Jose since our other flight isn’t until 2:20 PM anyways and we probably should have done it that way to begin with. Again the Hotel is helpful contacting that service and getting the price for that ($240 for four people).
Now we have to go to sleep and just wing it, like in the old days. Either SANSA will have our reservations or they won’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it either way…
Turns out the airport is sort of a sleepy place before 6 AM, when suddenly velvet barriers start going up and airline check-in agents appear. So we’re tired and nervously waiting.
Turns out…
To be continued…