Generating good karma
I am exhausted from the conference this weekend, but oh my goodness it was amazing!!! I had the best time ever and will be posting a re-cap of FitBloggin’ later this week for everyone who wasn’t able to make it and also to share some awesome new blogs for you all to start reading.
On Thursday I arrived at the airport (to go to the FitBloggin’ 2011 conference) with plenty of time to spare… or so I thought. Once I walked into the Winnipeg airport, I took out my travel documents and my heart almost stopped. According to my documents – which I had apparently neglected to double-check the evening before – my flight was leaving at 6:30 a.m. rather than 8:35 a.m., as I had assumed.
Can you see me on the ground chasing the airplane? "Wait! Don't leave without me!" 🙂
After a mad dash to the airline counter, I discovered that my flight had already taken off ten minutes earlier. “The next flight we can get you on leaves at 1 p.m. this afternoon,” the woman at the desk said helpfully. That’s when a couple of the other people working behind the counter stepped in and somehow worked a miracle and checked me into a flight that was leaving at 7:30 a.m. It was at this point that my heart started beating regularly once again and my hands stopped shaking. By pure luck and the kindness of the people working the Delta airlines, I was able to make my connection and get to the hotel in Baltimore right on schedule. Amazing!
I felt pretty bad, though, because I had arrived at the airport with the mother dear. It was a complete coincidence that she had an early morning flight to Cambodia to visit the father dear on Thursday, so we went to the airport together. Instead of giving her a hug and wishing her a good trip, I think the last words she heard out of my mouth were curses as I ran full-tilt to the Delta airline counter. When I remembered that I’d ditched her, I turned back around, but she was already gone. Oops. Sorry, mother dear. Consider this my virtual hug and farewell 😉 (am I a bad daughter?).
I was very impressed with the way that Delta handled the situation. They were so kind to me even though the mistake was entirely my own. So yesterday, after my Baltimore-to-Minnesota flight, it was my turn to do something for Delta airlines. As it happened, there was a major power outage on Saturday at their airport, meaning that a ton of flights were cancelled. This resulted in a very crowded airport on Sunday… and more than one flight was over-booked. Including mine. Delta put out a call for volunteers to be re-routed to Chicago on their way to Winnipeg. Since I had no big plans for Sunday afternoon, other than doing some grocery shopping and unpacking and such, I offered to be one of the volunteers.
This is one of those times when it’s really useful to be single (or it’s really annoying, depending on your perspective…). See, no one expects people with families to give up their seat. I overheard one guy saying loudly that he wasn’t volunteering because his kids were waiting for him back home. You can almost feel everyone’s eyes on you when you’re by yourself: hey, you look pretty young. You probably don’t have a family. There’s no one waiting for you at home! Come on, give up your seat! We have people to go home to! We deserve to go home! 🙂 Okay, so it’s not quite that bad. But I’ve got to admit that it does make sense for people who live alone without pets to be the ones to give up their seats. It’s just a mild inconvenience for us, whereas it gets more complicated for people with small children and the like.
So glad I didn't get the times mixed up on Sunday.
Anyways, a long wait and a $600 voucher to fly Delta (one of the perks of volunteering!) later, I was on my way to Chicago. And then after another wait, it was off to Winnipeg. The only complication that came up was that my suitcase was lost in the flight. Normally I don’t check baggage for exactly this reason, but I had no other choice because of all the awesome swag that I received at the FitBloggin’ conference. I’m now waiting anxiously for the call from the Winnipeg airport to get my bag returned. I don’t know exactly how the lost luggage fits in with my karma theory, but oh well. The point is, Delta was good to me, so they got themselves a volunteer.
So the moral of the story here is that you should always, always, always check and re-check your flight times in the days leading up to your travels! And maybe don’t tell the sistertraveller about your mistake. I have a feeling she’s never going to let me as “the responsible one” live this down, hehe.
Have you ever missed a flight due to your own ridiculousness? Was the airline accommodating for you? How do you feel about karma and giving back to others? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!
Sheesh! What a story. I really hope you get your suitcase back. They should be calling you today about that. Yeah yeah. It’ll be returned to you today. ((crossing fingers)).
You are AWESOME girl! Meeting you in person was definitely one of the big time highlights of my trip. weeeee!!!
Meeting YOU was one of the highlights of MY trip! I’m so glad that we finally got to meet each other 🙂 I fully expect to see you next year too!
WOW! What a story Sagan, geez! I don’t travel. I hate it. I did once, last year, flew alone. I got sick and felt awful and was terrified. Nobody on the plane was nice to me or helped me. I didn’t hurl on the plane but I could barely make it off. I was green, swimming, dizzy, obviously in a dire state. When I got to the concourse (after being sick in the bathroom), I sat down and cried and finally an airport volunteer helped me and basically held my hand all the way through the process until I found my hotel van. From there, the trip looked up as I fell in love with the kindness of my hotel van driver and another hotel worker who had to help me unlock my door 4 times during the 4 day stay…lol! Besides the plane, people were very nice to me everywhere that I visited. But the plane, I felt totally un-loved.
Anyways, I went out of my way to track down that airport volunteer and talk to his supervisor about how amazing he was. I sent thank-you notes to my hotel angels and also called their supervisors to talk them up. I think recognizing compassionate and kind behavior in the business world is important, and I’m so glad you have done that Sagan.
GLAD you had a good experience in the midst of a bad one!
Aww you poor thing! What an awful experience. Thank goodness SOME people are nice. That’s wonderful that you let them know how much you appreciate them, too – I think that’s something we all need to do more of; to TELL people when we appreciate them and their actions.
The ‘power outage’ line? I have heard that at least three times. The other excuse is generally that they ‘overfuelled’ the plane and need to take passengers off to lighten the load. Delta overbooks every single flight, it is a well known fact. I have never been on or seen a Delta flight that didn’t pull passengers (although they do all get vouchers). But the vouchers just ensure they fly Delta again.
By the way, be sure to use your voucher… it expires in either 6 months or 1 year, depending which one you got.
Hehehe! Sweetie, there was a tornado in Minneapolis. I’m pretty sure it really WAS a power outage this time 😉
But yes, I will definitely be making sure that I use my voucher. Free trip to visit my grandparents!
I haven’t ever missed a flight, but I have been at the gate in the plane when they decided it was not flight-worthy, so I did as you did and went straight to a counter and the person saved me by finding another flight! Actually it was that same trip (to Vancouver) where my companion “lost” their passport, yet the Canadian border folks let us through, which was unbelievably nice!! Between Canadian customs and US (which NEVER would have been so kind), I tore apart their garment bag and found the documents! They said I told them to put them in a safe place and they forgot where they put them!
Ahahaha, only Canada would let people in without passports…
And I have a terrible habit of putting things in a “safe place” and then forgetting where they went. It’s really amazing just how many ways you can hide stuff in a suitcase or in a 700 square foot condo.
Whoa, that’s great customer service right there, so great of them to get you a replacement flight so quickly and with no fuss. I wish our local airlines were as efficient as them. Though I wish there was a better way to determine “volunteers” for flight re-routing, perhaps they can do a random draw, so it wouldn’t seem so biased.