Friday, August 03, 2007

Not So Friendly Skies


Here's a brief recap of what's happened thus far on this travel day...

2:30 a.m. - Wakeup!
3:00 a.m. - Leave for PDX
5:00 a.m. - Arrive at PDX, check in for 6:20 a.m. flight to Minneapolis on Frontier Airlines
5:45 a.m. - Flight delayed until 7 a.m.
5:50 a.m. - Flight delayed until 11 a.m. and no longer going all the way to Minny (stopping in Denver, but not going on as originally scheduled)
6:00 a.m. - Began process of attempting to rebook through gate, desk and Timbers travel agent for flights on other airlines.
8:00 a.m. - Sprint to United counter to catch a 8:19 flight. Denied boarding as we were too late.
8:30 a.m. - Half the team hustles to the Northwest Counter for a 8:50 flight direct to Minny. Denied boarding - too late once again.
9:30 a.m. - Forced to wait until at least 11:30 to fly on Frontier to Denver (with no guarantee that will happen). Best case scenario has us arriving in the Twin Cities at 7:05 p.m., 5 1/2 hours late.

So much for the team's scheduled training session at 5 p.m. today. Evidently Frontier Airlines has one airplane and when it breaks, everyone booked to travel on that given day is screwed. They don't partner with any other airlines, thus giving them zero pull when it comes to booking passengers on other flights in order to make connections. This one guy in line at 5:45 a.m. was told that they could put him on a series of flights to get him from Portland to Indianapolis arriving at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday - 26 hours and 45 minutes later! If he starts driving his car now, he'll be there sooner than that.

I'd heard horror stories about Frontier prior to this trip, and having never flown the airline, shook them off. Now I know. So much for the baseball tickets I secured for tonight's Twins/Indians game at the Metrodome, featuring Cy Young winner Johan Santana and C.C. Sabathia. Curses!

As if the trip to Seattle on Wednesday wasn't bad enough! The Boys need to take care of the Thunder and capture three points (assuming we arrive by game time) or this trip has the potential of rivaling the Seattle/Vancouver bus debacle of a couple years back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Was the delay due to weather or mechanical issues? If it's weather, it's not their fault and they'll try to get you on another flight, but good luck. If it's mechanical, it IS their fault and they can get you more easily on another flight plus compensate you.

I've only had one issue with Frontier due to weather out of Chicago, but other than that they've been one of the better airlines, esp with DirecTV and the cashless cabin.