stress times three

i just had my most stress-related travel/airline woes story!

i should have known from the traffic jam that morning that things were not turning out as i would have wanted. first up, super shuttle picked me up 50 minutes later than what they told me. (full disclosure: the lady at the reservations told me that my waiting time was between 8:05 to 9:30 am. that should have made me think. the range is just too broad. when i called up around 830, they said my pick up time was between 9"05 to 9:30, which made better sense). the shuttle dropped me off at terminal 6. continental airlines.

at the curbside check=in, i gave my itinerary to the guy in charge. then he told me that he couldn't find my name in the system. he asked me to try inside. so i did. quickly. there was a long queue. when it was my turn, i punched in my trip number, my itinerary, my last name,to no avail. i was not in the system. panic set in. i checked the lower half of my e-ticket and saw continental airlines. i looked at the upper half and looked for a sign. something.

then i saw it, staring at me, mocking me.

delta confirmation number. how could i miss that? i wasn't flying continental. i was flying delta! panic set in again. i was lunging around 2 50-pound luggage, plus my hand-carry, and i needed to go to the delta terminal. time was running out.

thankfully, i made it to the delta terminal in time. first stressful moment over.

my flight had a connection in cincinnati. when we landed, i checked the monitors to find out my next gate. next to my flight was a flashing word i dreaded. delayed. still, i proceeded to the gate. my flight has been moved from 6 something to 755. when 755 almost came, they said that it was further delayed to 955. when 955 came, they said it was further delayed to 1155. there was a pattern somewhere. i didn't want to spend the night in some airport in ohio. i was stressing again. shortly past midnight, our flight left cincinnati. second stressful moment over.

i arrived shortly after 2 am. made a beeline to the baggage claim and i was pleasantly surprised to see one of my luggage already waiting for me. for a while, my idea that my third stressful moment would be finding out that my luggage didn't make it to new york was quashed. my luggage was here. well, at least one of them was. i waited until the last freaking bag was removed on the carousel.

weary, sleepy and bordering on angry, i marched towards the baggage office. i told them my story: i checked in two pieces of luggage, one arrived and the other one is missing. how the f*ck did this happen? (minus the f*cked part) they checked and checked. when they couldn't come up with something, they asked me to check it out at the delta airlines terminal. (the cincinnati flight was a code-share with continental airlines, hence my assumption that i was flying continetal all throughout)

i asked my co-worker who picked me up to bring me to delta terminal. there i saw volumes and volumes of luggage, and no official in site. i was getting frustrated. we returned to continental airlines. the guy who helped me earlier gave me a number to call, and told me i didn't need to fall in line anymore. he advised me to just go home, get some sleep and call the number first thing in the morning. stressful moment number three, definitely not yet over.

bottomline: my other luggage was indeed with delta. why? nobody could tell me. we had to return to the airport the next day to pick it up. thank god that the materials i needed for the weekend's expo in secaucus were in the luggage that i have. the missing one had my clothes and most of my stuff.

there it was, my blue luggage. airline officials have no explanation as to why this one didn't arrive and the other one did.