Wrote this up for friends who were enthralled at the piecemeal hiccups on FB during my last work trip. So here it is in edited form. Context: travelling MEL-DEN for a 9 day conference.
Things started relatively smoothly as these things go with a 1hr delay out of Melbourne, and then a 2hr delay out of Sydney on QF11. But i was in Business, and relaxing in the lounge with no worries. 15hrs later this led to the first real hiccup of the trip, with LAX being absolutely packed from three A380s landing sequentially, and very few immigration officials. So I missed my connecting AA flight to Denver. Compounding the issue was that one of my bags didn't arrive, and so I was down a bag that was checked through to Denver but needed pickup and redrop. No matter, I ended up being rebooked on another flight with United. Trundle down from TBIT to Terminal 7 to find out that United cannot issue me a ticket for the new flight, as the Qantas system believes I boarded the AA flight that took off as I was still standing in the Immigration queue. Uhhh.... security problems anyone? After some frantic rebooking onto three different flights that kept closing before they could issue a ticket, I finally ended up ticketed for another flight. Only at the TSA checkpoint they decided that I needed to gate check a bag... which you guessed it, didn't arrive in Denver.
No problems, bags will show up eventually, and now I am in Denver. First few days of our time there went well, until we came home late one evening to the presence of several fire engines outside the hotel. Nevertheless we were told there wasn't an issue in our hotel, but rather it was the one over the road. The following morning the shower was a little colder than usual, but I thought nothing of it and headed off for the second day of a pre-conference. At 2:45pm I headed back to the room to drop a bag and get ready for chairing a conference session, only to find an evacuation notice on all the doors and in the lift. Got up to the room to find two firefighters and two hotel personnel about to start packing our room for us, leading to madly packing up everything and shoving it on a luggage trolley to be transferred somewhere. We were advised that another hotel down the road had taken our bookings and would honour the rest of the stay. Two cancelled Ubers later and we finally get to the new hotel to find that it was full... no honouring of the bookings here. Furthermore, the hotel staff were exceedingly rude and played the blame game between the two hotels. Quotable quote from "the manager" (plot twist: he wasn't the manager) was that "I would rather be at a fashion show than dealing with your s**t." Right'o then, cue calling travel insurance to try and find a suitable booking in a city that is having 10,000+ conference attendees descend upon it for the weekend. Mercifully we were able to find another suitable hotel room and transferred there. Later on I would find out that the fire engines definitely did have to do with our hotel, as they were dealing with a fire in a shared plant room, which lead to a gas leak that eventually caused the boiler to explode in the basement.
After that experience the rest was fairly straight forward.... hah. On Thanksgiving I ordered a Lyft to head out to a friend's place, only to have that driver fail to give way to a tram which basically destroyed the driver's rear side. After Thanksgiving I received a call saying my QF93 LAX-MEL flight was delayed 12hrs, and then the following morning I found out it was cancelled. Furthermore, my morning UA DEN-LAX flight was cancelled and shifted to a late afternoon flight. No problems, with the extra time in Denver I decided to go up to Red Rocks for a walk. On the way back my Uber was pulled over for speeding, at which point it was discovered he did not have his licence or insurance on him, causing him to be detained. Another Uber call and we were back in business.
Finally, upon arriving at Denver airport for my United flight, I found out that United couldn't ticket me for the sequence as the Qantas automated system had booked me on an impossible transit through LAX (T-17mins). After calling Qantas—and getting through in record time—they sorted a new flight via Sydney. However, United still couldn't issue tickets for the bag tags and so I had to pickup and re-check bags. None of which was an issue at all, despite the apparent #travelcurse. So, here I am, ended up back at home only a few hours after schedule and with most of my gear intact. The bag recovery group that Qantas use in the USA still believe that I have lost a bag (which was mysteriously delivered to my original hotel by a courier) and I can't convince them otherwise; and the only casualty has been a little bit of my sanity.
All in all it wasn't terrible, and will go down with the other 2022 things, like spending 40+hrs on hold with Qantas, or BA and Lufthansa cancelling all of their flights, or the train brakes catching fire in Kirkcaldy....
Things started relatively smoothly as these things go with a 1hr delay out of Melbourne, and then a 2hr delay out of Sydney on QF11. But i was in Business, and relaxing in the lounge with no worries. 15hrs later this led to the first real hiccup of the trip, with LAX being absolutely packed from three A380s landing sequentially, and very few immigration officials. So I missed my connecting AA flight to Denver. Compounding the issue was that one of my bags didn't arrive, and so I was down a bag that was checked through to Denver but needed pickup and redrop. No matter, I ended up being rebooked on another flight with United. Trundle down from TBIT to Terminal 7 to find out that United cannot issue me a ticket for the new flight, as the Qantas system believes I boarded the AA flight that took off as I was still standing in the Immigration queue. Uhhh.... security problems anyone? After some frantic rebooking onto three different flights that kept closing before they could issue a ticket, I finally ended up ticketed for another flight. Only at the TSA checkpoint they decided that I needed to gate check a bag... which you guessed it, didn't arrive in Denver.
No problems, bags will show up eventually, and now I am in Denver. First few days of our time there went well, until we came home late one evening to the presence of several fire engines outside the hotel. Nevertheless we were told there wasn't an issue in our hotel, but rather it was the one over the road. The following morning the shower was a little colder than usual, but I thought nothing of it and headed off for the second day of a pre-conference. At 2:45pm I headed back to the room to drop a bag and get ready for chairing a conference session, only to find an evacuation notice on all the doors and in the lift. Got up to the room to find two firefighters and two hotel personnel about to start packing our room for us, leading to madly packing up everything and shoving it on a luggage trolley to be transferred somewhere. We were advised that another hotel down the road had taken our bookings and would honour the rest of the stay. Two cancelled Ubers later and we finally get to the new hotel to find that it was full... no honouring of the bookings here. Furthermore, the hotel staff were exceedingly rude and played the blame game between the two hotels. Quotable quote from "the manager" (plot twist: he wasn't the manager) was that "I would rather be at a fashion show than dealing with your s**t." Right'o then, cue calling travel insurance to try and find a suitable booking in a city that is having 10,000+ conference attendees descend upon it for the weekend. Mercifully we were able to find another suitable hotel room and transferred there. Later on I would find out that the fire engines definitely did have to do with our hotel, as they were dealing with a fire in a shared plant room, which lead to a gas leak that eventually caused the boiler to explode in the basement.
After that experience the rest was fairly straight forward.... hah. On Thanksgiving I ordered a Lyft to head out to a friend's place, only to have that driver fail to give way to a tram which basically destroyed the driver's rear side. After Thanksgiving I received a call saying my QF93 LAX-MEL flight was delayed 12hrs, and then the following morning I found out it was cancelled. Furthermore, my morning UA DEN-LAX flight was cancelled and shifted to a late afternoon flight. No problems, with the extra time in Denver I decided to go up to Red Rocks for a walk. On the way back my Uber was pulled over for speeding, at which point it was discovered he did not have his licence or insurance on him, causing him to be detained. Another Uber call and we were back in business.
Finally, upon arriving at Denver airport for my United flight, I found out that United couldn't ticket me for the sequence as the Qantas automated system had booked me on an impossible transit through LAX (T-17mins). After calling Qantas—and getting through in record time—they sorted a new flight via Sydney. However, United still couldn't issue tickets for the bag tags and so I had to pickup and re-check bags. None of which was an issue at all, despite the apparent #travelcurse. So, here I am, ended up back at home only a few hours after schedule and with most of my gear intact. The bag recovery group that Qantas use in the USA still believe that I have lost a bag (which was mysteriously delivered to my original hotel by a courier) and I can't convince them otherwise; and the only casualty has been a little bit of my sanity.
All in all it wasn't terrible, and will go down with the other 2022 things, like spending 40+hrs on hold with Qantas, or BA and Lufthansa cancelling all of their flights, or the train brakes catching fire in Kirkcaldy....
