the airport - christmas pt 1

I am going to post a few observations from my Christmas break over the next week or so. I thought about doing this in chronological order, but I decided against that since the airport incidents are freshest in my mind right now.

Golden and I flew Southwest to and from Pittsburgh. Southwest has a policy that the first third of the people to get boarding passes get an A on their pass. The next third get a B and the next third get a C. People with an A get to board first and get the first pick of seats. People with a B go on next and people with a C get the last choice of seats. If you are in a group and you all have C tickets your group will almost certainly be broken up.

Both the flights there and back went through the Chicago Midway airport. Of the four legs we flew (KC to Chicago, Chicago to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh to Chicago, and Chicago to KC) only on the stretch from Chicago to Pittsburgh did we get A tickets. This seemed stupid because I printed the tickets out ahead of time online. There were several people that I spoke with in the B lines we were in that said this was the first time they ever got a B when printing online. It turned out not to matter much because we got the same exact seats on every flight without trouble. I do think, though, that the ability to print your boarding passes ahead of time really screws this up because I got B tickets for the return flights the day before we left. If you don't happen to be near an online connection with a printer exactly 24 hours before your flight you are screwed.

After spending most of yesterday either on a flight or in the B line waiting for a flight we got into Kansas City in the late afternoon. When we waited for our bags, though, only one of the two made it onto the carousel.

When we went to the baggage claim desk to file a complaint we got to hear a conversation between the lady at the desk and the woman directly in front of us in line. Apparently the woman in front of us in line was missing clothing, makeup, paperwork, and gifts that were important to her. She rudely made the point that these were important to her I guess under the assumption that making the lady at the desk feel bad would make the luggage miraculously appear. I wanted to point out to the person in front of me that everyone in that line was missing something important, but most of us know that being a jerk about it doesn't help anyone. I wanted to, but I didn't.

We filed a report for our luggage and were given a paper with a phone number to call if we didn't receive our bag in five days. That length of time made me a little nervous, but there was nothing else that could be done. Around 11 PM we got a call saying that the bag would be dropped off between 1 AM and 3 AM. If we didn't want them to knock at the door we would have to leave a note asking them to leave the bag outside. At six this morning I saw the bag on the porch and rolled it in. I am so happy that I can now brush my teeth.