Entries from October 2007 ↓

So after posting last month that it seemed like Northwest was getting better, I must change my tune. I experienced the worst airline experience I’ve ever had. A routine trip to our L.A. office:

1. Flight out: 10 mins late boarding.
2. “Please deplane, we are over the weight restriction.” Whatever that means. Don’t they know how much a plane can hold by now?
3. “Please board the new plane in 45 minutes.” Ugh. Fine.
4. (45 minutes becomes an hour and a half)
5. Second plane has a broken start valve
6. About 45 minutes later, the start valve is fixed and we leave
7. We are now 2 hours late departing and will have 15 minutes to get from LAX to the Campbell-Ewald L.A. office.
8. Once over the Rockies, we were bouncing with a turbulence that the Cedar Point Amusement Park would be envious of. Admittedly, this is not Northwest’s fault, nor is it under their control. I leave it in only because it made the ride that much worse.
9. Then we begin choking on the smell of the fires over Malibu, et al. Again, not Northwest’s fault.
10. We finally land, a 4-1/2 hour trip became 8 hours

Jason and I have noticed something odd about Google’s Blog Search. We can both type in the identical search query at the exact same second and get differing results. Anyone else noticed this?

I recently flew to Miami with a friend. We purchased what we thought were direct flights (according to Priceline), however after departing, we were told that the flight would be stopping over in Chicago before continuing. A minor annoyance, but at the time, confusing as we and several other passengers were unaware of this until we actually began to land in Chicago.

Today I received an email apology from Priceline:

It has come to our attention that your trip that departed from Detroit - Wayne County(DTW) on 9/13/2007 involved an intermediate stop which may not have been disclosed prior to purchase.

We apologize for any inconvenience. As an expression of our thanks for your business, and with regard to any inconvenience this may have caused, we will be processing a credit of $50 per ticket to the credit card used for this purchase.

That’s fantastic. What a nice way to handle that and ensure that I will definitely be using Priceline again.