(revised 5/20/07)
The purpose of our trip was to visit with Laura and her friends and family after the death of her father and to attend a memorial service in his honor and a reception afterwards. These activities would occur on Saturday, September 2nd, in Plymouth, N.H. We live in Washington, D.C. Google Maps estimated driving time as ten hours. Without stops. We would have to fly. The appropriate destination airport seemed to be Manchester (MHT), about an hour south of Plymouth. Nancy, Molly, and I would be traveling. We had taken Andrew to Haverford College to begin his freshman year the previous Wednesday, so he could not be with us.
Visiting hours were scheduled from 1:00 to 3:00 at the Mayhew Funeral Home. The memorial service would be at 4:00 at the Starr King Unitarian Church.
Doing a web search for plane tickets, I found no direct flights for under $500/ticket and found only one flight combination which accommodated our schedule and for a reasonable price. This would have us arrive at MHT at 12:56 p.m., which would give us only two hours to get our bags, get the rental car, and make the hour-long drive to Plymouth before visiting hours at the funeral home were over. Pretty tight, but with luck we could possibly make the last ten or so minutes, which was worth the effort in my book. I booked the tickets with cheaptickets.com. $590 for three round-trip tickets. Non-refundable. Leaves Baltimore (BWI) at 9:30 a.m., arrives in Philadelphia (PHL) at 10:17. After an hour and 21-minute layover, leaves PHL at 11:35 for arrival at MHT. (Full fare, I later learned from a US Airlines agent, for one ticket and just between PHL and MHT was $600; round-trip, I presume.)
To streamline the process, we’d carry on all luggage. For the rental car I registered for Hertz’s express service. I wasn’t sure what that really meant, but it sounded good and was free.
After further checking, it turned out that, due to the recent London terrorist arrests, no liquids or gels are allowed in carry-on luggage. That includes toothpaste, beauty products, contact lens solution. Weighing the pros and cons of taking/not taking such products against the probability of not making visiting hours, we decided that we probably wouldn’t have enough time to make visiting hours anyway, so we could afford the luxury of checking our luggage. We’d pack everybody’s items in one suitcase.
On the appointed day, we left our home at 7:00 a.m., arriving at “daily parking” at BWI at 7:50. After parking the car—$20 per day—we arrived at the US Airlines ticket counter. After a reasonable wait we reached the head of our line. I waited for the ticket agent to recognize us and invite us to approach. Well, apparently, they don’t do that anymore. At the counter at the head of each line was an electronic “kiosk” where you tap in your information and tickets are supposed to come out. So, while I was waiting to be recognized by the agent, someone behind us in line jumped ahead and said, if we’re not going to use the machine, then he would. I apologized for my ignorance and told him that he was not welcome to jump ahead. He returned to his place and I approached the machine. I tapped in my information (confirmation numbers, passenger names, etc.). The machine told me that it can’t help me and that I must talk to a ticket agent. Meanwhile, the woman who I thought was our ticket agent was running back and forth appearing to service people from multiple lines. The agent didn’t recognize my pleading glance until a few minutes later when she looked up and said, “Kenneth Nellis?” Apparently, the machine informed her of my need for assistance. I gave her our flight information and our luggage, she typed some stuff into her computer, and handed me one of those folders into which they put tickets and boarding passes. I gave a quick check and noticed that it was empty. When I asked where I should get my boarding pass, she looked puzzled and asked for the folder back. She typed in some more information and put my boarding pass in the folder and returned it to me. I checked again and saw that it only had my boarding pass and not those for Nancy and Molly. I inquired. She got snippy. Things went downhill. Finally, we left with six boarding passes, one for each of us for each of the two legs of our trip to Manchester.
Next, of course, is security. Put all metal objects in the tray. Take off your shoes and jacket. Put tray, shoes, jacket, and carry-on items on conveyor belt. Walk through metal detector. No glitches. We reshod our feet, gathered our stuff, and moved to the gate.
It’s now slightly before 9:00 and the departure board says our flight is still “on time.” We board when Zone 3 is called. It’s a small jet, twenty-some rows of seats, three across, and branded “US Air Express.” We’re in row 13. Am I superstitious?
After we were on board we were informed that, despite us being “on time,” there was a large backup at PHL due to tropical depression (formerly tropical storm) Ernesto. Not to worry, we of connecting flights were informed: the connecting flights were, no doubt, delayed, so there was little fear in missing them. Our schedule, however, could not accommodate even an hour of slippage, so I called US Airlines for status on the connecting flight to Manchester. Cancelled. So now we’re queued up for take-off and the captain says we won’t be at the head of the line for takeoff until 11:00. We and at least two other parties did not want to go to PHL because our connecting flights were cancelled, so the flight attendant took a vote of who wanted to return to the terminal. Only our family voted affirmatively—Molly reluctantly—so we remained on the plane. (The counter argument was that the plane would lose its place in line if it were to return to the terminal and we’d then inconvenience the other passengers.) So, we ended up flying to Philadelphia and getting return tickets to BWI and cancelling the rental car and hotel reservations while waiting for our 1:30 return flight.
At PHL, I talked with a gate attendant about our situation. He said our bags had continued on to Manchester in a later flight that would also leave PHL at 1:30. (That flight would not arrive at MHT until around 3:00. Even if that schedule were not nullified by Ernesto, we would have little chance of making the 4:00 memorial service.) Because our flight was cancelled, I thought it reasonable to ask about refunds for our non-refundable tickets. The agent took my inquiry as audacious, indicating that a refund was not bloody likely. Guess I need to talk to someone else. Perhaps the credit card company?
We boarded our flight back to BWI, which was uneventful. At BWI I filed a baggage claim. They said it would probably arrive at our house on Monday, which it did—at 2:22 a.m. We took the shuttle bus back to daily parking and drove home, arriving at 4:20.
I still need to resolve the issue of paying for three round-trip tickets from BWI to MHT of which US Airlines cancelled the PHL-to-MHT part and we therefore didn’t want the BWI-to-PHL part, but were forced to go anyway.