The World Needs More Ninjas

After American’s last performance, I was in eager anticipation of seeing what they do for an encore. As an addendum to my last blog, American did send me an unsolicited email (I guess they correlated my frequent flyer number to the delays) and told me that they were crediting 7000 miles to my account. This means I’m one step closer to being able to go through travel hassles for free rather than having to pay for them . Exciting.

On Wednesday, I made my way from Champaign to Chicago to Baltimore. Evidently the stars aligned perfectly this day because both flights were on time. I must say, Baltimore (BWI) is the nicest airport I’ve seen in recent memory. Everything seems new and clean. It must be a hub for Southwest because they had quite a presence there. If only they had free WiFi in the terminal, it would immediately be my favorite airport.

Friday I had to catch an early return flight. It left at 7:20 am, but my hotel was 50 minutes away nearer to the DC area. Since this would be my first time ever returning a rental car, I wanted to make sure I left plenty of time. So, I was up at the rather unpleasant time of 4 am (3 am central time). The rental return proved to be much easier than the pickup and I made it through security in plenty of time. I even had time to watch a Firefly episode in the terminal.

The flight from BWI to O’Hare went fine. I arrived in Chicago about an hour and a half before the Champaign flight and everything seemed to be on time. Everything seemed to be on time, that is, until about half an hour before boarding when the gate attendant’s first announcement was, “The flight to Champaign has been cancelled, please see the desk to make alternative travel arrangements.” There were only a couple of seats left on the next couple of flights to Champaign and all flights to Bloomington were also cancelled.

This begs the question: why was the flight cancelled? My answer is: I don’t know. Champaign was having a beautiful 70 degree day. Chicago was overcast and had some wind, but it certainly didn’t seem like a showstopper. Here’s what makes the situation all the more entertaining. Evidently, on the previous night, the last flight from Chicago to Champaign took off and smoke started filling the cabin. So, it promptly landed and American put all the passengers up in a hotel since it was a mechanical issue. And, of course, those passengers were booked on this flight, which was the first to Champaign. So, now they’ve had two flights in a row cancelled.

I decided that there was no way I was going to try to catch another flight since American seems to cancel them for no apparent reason. So, I got the attendant to give me a voucher to ride the shuttle to Champaign. Again. And here is where American really shines. OK, weather is beyond there control (though part of me wants to say that they should have been smart enough not to put there hub in a city nicknamed “The Windy City”). But, here’s their algorithm for giving out shuttle vouchers: just keep giving them to everyone, be ambiguous about whether or not they actually have a reservation for the shuttle, and tell everyone that they should definitely be able to catch the next shuttle.

The end result is that twenty people show up at the 10-person shuttle and the shuttle driver is utterly perplexed why American told everyone that they could get on that ride. So, my flight was originally supposed to leave at 10 am. I couldn’t catch the noon shuttle because too many other people wanted to ride it. I guess most of those that had been there overnight deserved first dib, but still there was no ordering system for how people got on. Everyone was just kind of whining to the driver and some people just kind of butted their way into the van. Surely it wouldn’t be that difficult for American to put a queue location on each person’s voucher based on the order in which they were handed out. This way, at least there would be a priority system that people know and respect. Plus, you could better gauge how long you would have to wait until getting a seat. Of course, the shuttle service only lets you make reservations if you prepay with a credit card…so people with a voucher can’t go that route.

Anyway, at 1:30 pm, another shuttle showed up and I was able to get on this one. Same driver as I had on Saturday…who actually happens to be rather amusing. I ended up getting the Champaign around 4:30 pm. Only about five hours delayed this time. Yep, American’s service must be improving since my last delay was overnight.