Time to write something complimentary about Aer Lingus for a change. When we left rainy Chicago an hour late from Ohare, we were not likely to make our one hour connection in Dublin for Rome.
So we changed to a later flight that had us contemplating a quick trip to Dublin to help kill 7 hours wait time. But thanks to tail winds, we made it to Dublin close to the scheduled time, rushed to our original flight gate where a lovely gate agent got us back on this flight. Thank you Tara. I do intend to revisit Ireland sometime just not under today’s circumstances. Onward!
What a difference a modern aircraft and entertainment system can make on a trans Atlantic flight. My outbound flight had a near-nonfunctional entertainment system. Today’s aircraft has touch screens! Oh joy.
In flight entertainment recommendation
I stumbled upon some surprisingly good viewing options. First up, a two part documentary picturing the Obamas (about the two dazzling Obama portraits) that had me teary at times. I remember going to see them at the National Portrait Gallery and spending most of my time watching people looking at them, taking photos of themselves beside them, crying. It was profoundly moving.
This doc followed the portraits as they went on tour in five cities (including my new home in Chicago). It was fascinating to see how the five different museums created educational , cultural and marketing efforts around the portraits visit, coming up with so many interesting ways to entice people who often don’t feel welcome in high art institutions to visit and better yet, to feel comfortable and connect with the place and its art. I particularly loved watching the kids look at the portraits.
There were also illuminating interviews with Amy sherod and Kehinde Wiley, the two portrait painters whose work I have sought out ever since seeing those portraits. And of course there were fond images and footage from the hope and change Obama years.
All I saw of Ireland this trip 😕
I also found a good Austin city lights type show, I guess the Irish version called Other Voices and watched one episode filmedin a tiny church in isolated dingle peninsula with St. Vincent doing acoustic and in Austin with Margo Price. Both excellent. Another episode had a very young amy winehouse in 2006 singing to maybe 30 people. Cannot imagine!Even the food was a step up from the previous flight. Not stellar but edible.
I was confused by the layover in the Dublin airport because it seemed like a completely different place from the airport I passed though on my outbound trip and in January when I connected thru Dublin en route to Paris and Madrid. This time I had 4 hours to kill. And we had to go though security twice (pulling out our toiletries and electronics again) when we arrived and when we left, which seemed odd. We’d already sent our stuff through the conveyor belt in Frankfurt. Why did we need to do it before entering the Dublin airport and before leaving it? I don’t remember that from our previous trip and considering how tight those connecting flights were we might have been in trouble making our next flight. I talked with the security guys at the second check point snd they said something about this being new and a trial run for two months. I don’t get the thinking.
I did understand this time, unlike the past trip, that we were going though u.s. immigration/customs in Dublin, which is fabulous because it means when we land in Chicago, no long lines. (And there was NO line in Dublin.) It’s like leaving the airport after a domestic flight. Apparently Ireland is one of the few airports with this (ore- clearance, I think it’s called) and I’m I curious how it came about.
Stocking up for next flight
During the layover, I also was in one of those shopping mall/food hall type spaces to wait which was completely different from the previous trips where we were in a relatively bare bones gate area with few amenities (shops, restaurants). So it was confusing. Not the airport I remembered from just 4 days ago, let alone two months ago.
Yes, I have only myself to blame for flying this odd airline again, after a fiasco in January with lost luggage (for five days) plus long airport lines that almost caused us to miss our flights from Paris to Dublin to Chicago and led to the disappearance of my watch at the Paris securitycheckpoint. You get what you pay for I guess. But I arrived safely in Frankfurt (via Dublin).
Still it’s not reassuring when three flight attendants cannotfigure out what appears to be an ancient entertainment system. After poking at the screen for who knows how long, Isought advice from an attendant who also had no luck with the touchscreen. Another attendant told me to use the remote hidden in the armrest, also from another era. None of the attendants could figure out how to use the thing, which is an ancient cell phone on one side and an ancientremote on the other. Neither work. I did find a barely functioning screen by switching seats. Terrible sound but at least I got a movie.
I get the impression from the attendants that this is an old plane that they don’tusually fly. Hopefullyit’s just the entertainment system that’s out of date…and not working. Ididn’tcheck my luggage.
We finally received our luggage, five days after it never showed up at O’Hare Airport following Aer Lingus flights from Dublin and before that, Paris. Lessons learned:
Do not check luggage.
Do not put valuable stuff /things you care about in your checked luggage. Carry it on! This includes items such as: prescription glasses, prescription meds, almost completed diary, gifts for family, the right-foot sneaker — the left-foot sneaker was in my carryon bag.
If your checked luggage gets lost, keep bugging Aer Lingus (or whatever airline) for information (i.e. be a royal pain in the ass). We also posted our complaints on Twitter and Facebook with #AerLingus. The tweet got an AL response although who knows how much it helped. The FB post helped me find another good resource: The Aer Lingus Complaints Action Group on Facebook. Yes, there is one and people were very helpful, although it was a bit discouraging to read about people who had waits longer than ours.
Request “priority” or “expedited service” — I didn’t know if this existed but apparently it does, or it seemed to get a response. There were “priority” tags on our returned bags, as well as “rush” tags.
For Chicago area folks who lose luggage at O’Hare: Our baggage was finally delivered by Alpha-Tech Aviation Services.https://alphatechaviationsvcs.com/ This is good to know because AL told us it was Alpha Delivery Services, which it was not. The poor folks at Alpha Delivery Services, based in Kalamazoo, MI, were very kind – and sounded weary. They have gotten previous emails/calls from frantic people seeking their lost luggage and said AL has given out their number. (This is true. AL gave it to us too.)
I don’t know if this helped but I did try the pathetic route – mentioning that our luggage contained prescription meds and eyeglasses.
Don’t put cheese in your checked luggage…although ours was vacuumed packed and seemed to survive.
Consider buying Apple air tags for those times when luggage must be checked. (Ex: small no frills airlines that don’t allow much in the way of carryon luggage.
Several airport and flight procedures have changed since I last traveled overseas, pre-pandemic, in 2019. (Fortunately there are no longer Covid protocols , for now at least. ) Here’s a few I noticed as a US citizen during our recent trip to London:
No more entry stamp in our US Passport for the UK: sadly, this is no more, thanks to today’s person-less immigration procedure (aka automatic epassport) involves interacting with a computerized machine, not a human. I don’t miss the sometimes hostile questions from the old human immigration officers, (how long you’re staying? when you are leaving?) But I still find it spooky to have to stand in front of a facial recognition machine, bleary-eyed after a long flight, to check while scanning my passport atop a screen — to check my identity by making sure my face matches my passport. Fingerprinting is also spooky…I watched some people, presumably not American citizens, doing this when entering the US.
King and Queen of the (Ludlow) castle (can you spot us way up top by the flag, waving?)
No more paper forms to fill out before (or after) landing: this includes the once-standard form for entering the UK, which required you to give the address where you are staying during your visit. Upon returning to the US, we actually conversed with an immigration officer in a booth who took our photos, looked at our passports and gave us a form to declare our purchases for customs, if need be. (No need.) In the past you needed to fill out a customs form and do so in the plane. Bn
Older, less perfect-looking or polished flight attendants – Not that there is anything wrong with this but our flight attendants this trip appeared to be in their 50s or 60s, and dressed more casually. One female attendant was full of good humor; another looked downright unhappy, like she hated her job…Or maybe passengers.
King and Queen of Ludlow Castle.#2
More passengers with carry-on luggage, although still plenty of overhead compartment space – We gave up a rare chance to check our bags free of charge and instead lugged our suitcases onto the plane in order to avoid our bags being lost amidst other checked luggage and/or to shorten our journey out of the airport.
I am very glad I opted (uncharacteristically) to pay $100 extra per ticket for our flights to London so we’d get “changeable” tickets. When my husband tested positive for Covid this week (He’s ok. Bad cold symptoms and initial high fever) it was five days before our flight to London. I discovered it was surprisingly easy to rebook our tickets, pushing our trip back a week (in case I get Covid. So far so good.). We even got $90 per ticket in travel credits. (Never would have guessed the cost would drop.)
London friends I can’t wait to see!
Meanwhile, rebooking our train travel was NOT easy. I couldn’t just change the dates of travel. I had to buy new tickets, which was very easy. Then I could apply for a refund, which was ridiculously difficult. No surprise that it was easy to spend more money but not to get money back. Shame on you, Great Western Railway! This was compounded by the announced rail strike days…with no service on 3 days of our trip. Grrrr.
On another cancellation front, after failing to find someone to give my Joffrey ballet tickets, hours before the performance, I looked closer at the fine print on the Joffrey website and learned that I could exchange them for a credit to use for a performance later in the season. I called the box office and voila! Now I can go to a performance through April 2023 (the current season).
Who we don’t want to see in London
Back to the airline situation: Our “ main cabin” tickets, I learned allow us to change them —- specifically to rebook the same trip and do it severaltimes, if need be, without charge, beyond paying more (or less, as it happened) due to the new flight possibly costing more than the original one. Good to know and handy in case I develop Covid.
Google tells me: “The main difference between main cabin and basic economy is cost. For cheaper airfare and more money in your pocket, you trade flexibility for flight changes and/or cancellations, seat selection options and the ability to earn miles at a high rate. Love them or hate them, basic economy fares are here to stay.Apr 22, 2022”
I asked the American Airlines agent what would have happened if we had the cheaper “basic economy” ticket and she said we would not have been able to change/rebook the ticket. Or that’s what I understood her to say. Surely, I said, if someone is sick, especially with Covid, you don’t want them flying and would help them stay off the plane. She then said something to the effect that they could rebook once. (Not sure about the other particulars ex: change fee? Paying the possible difference in fares? Etc.)
Last January, when I decided not to go to a gathering in Atlanta, due to a Covid spike, Delta gave me travel credits with my basic economy tix (or some such), which I am using for thanksgiving flights to NY. But that was cancellation not rebooking flights.
The fine print on the American website specifies the policy for a variety of what I loosely called “changes” and the varying options, depending on the ticket type/cost. Another variable: the airline you choose. For an American Airlines basic economy ticket for example: if you cancel a trip, you can’t exchange the ticket or get a refund. But if you need to rebook the trip, you can sort of. The process/options are more “restrictive” than higher priced tickets. (The fine print doesn’t mention the possible option of getting travel credits if you cancel.)
Moral of story: ASK what is available and politely but firmly stick up for yourself. Play the pity card if need be. Or appeal to the airline to be reasonable, although this doesn’t always work.
I still have not forgiven American for screwing up my daughter’s (expensive, albeit “basic economy”) flights to a family wedding in New Mexico in early June. They cancelled her flights (for non-mechanical, non-weather reasons! It was due to their staff shortage) and then gave her awful options for other flights. She came close to missing the wedding. And the changes added even more stress to the trip. I was particularly incensed that they would not give her an available seat that was a decent alternative because it was a much higher fare seat. She’d have to pay considerably more.
American has improved its customer service, although I don’t doubt my latest experience had to do partly with having a higher fare ticket. I braced myself for a long wait on the phone for an agent (several hours in the recent past with an airline) but got a call back in a matter of minutes and the agent was efficient and accommodating (again, perhaps in part because I had a pricier, more flexible ticket but still…)
If you discover that the airline’s refund is less than you paid for your ticket — as I did, specifically $68 less for my ticket, $50 less for my husband’s ticket – here are words to the wise: Call again and ask what’s up. I did and found out that the shortfall equaled the cost of choosing seats, which is deemed “an additional purchase.” It is also refundable but the refund must be done separately from the rest of the ticket. It’s not clear if an additional refund REQUEST is required, i.e. if I would have been refunded for this additional purchase had I NOT called the airline.
My advice: Call the airline (if you booked via the airline) and make your case. Don’t do via an emailed refund request. (My request was denied via the United website ) But when I called the airline, I was granted a refund surprisingly quickly.
More details: we bought direct tickets from United last April for an early September flight from Chicago to Paris for $450 each — knowing we might not be able to go due to the coronavirus situation – a situation we had no idea would get THIS BAD). We bought the tickets because they were ridiculously cheap, we had long-established plans (a house booked with friends in Burgundy, sigh) and we could cancel or change with no fee and get compensation, whether a credit or refund.
Our flights were soon changed by United from direct to connecting via Newark and our outbound flight leaving at 2 p.m. rather than the original 6 p.m. — both grounds, I thought, for a refund. (We also assume the flights will eventually be cancelled.) We prefer a refund rather than credit, which according to United must be used to book a new flight “within a year of the original ticket issue date.” I think that means we have to book the flight by April 2021 but we don’t have to fly by April 2021. Also I’m assuming we can fly anywhere and are not locked into our original destination. Regardless, we now question whether we’ll be able to fly at all next year – and if so, when. So just give us our money back, please! e
United’s “Cancel Bot” informed me I could ‘submit a request” for a refund if my flight “wasn’t rebooked within two hours of (the) original departure time.” But I learned that “submit a request” doesn’t automatically mean “receive a request.” Two weeks later, an email from the “refund desk” denied my submitted request. But when I called United ( 1-800-UNITED1 ), I barely had to make my case. The agent said I was eligible for a refund for the reasons I presented in the email request. Of course ,I’m sad we can’t go….but relieved to get the refund. We’ll go as soon as we can…and maybe even fly United, since it was reasonable, after all, about all this.
I have flown three times during the past 10 days (Feb 29-March 9) of the coronavirus situation (Des Moines to San Francisco via Vegas on Southwest; San Francisco to Burbank on Southwest; Burbank to DSM via Salt Lake City on Delta) and here’s what I noticed:
– A few people wearing masks, not many.
– A few people wiping their seating area with wet wipes and their hands with hand sanitizer. (Me included by flying day #2 when I found unopened wipes in my travel bag that I bought last fall in Vietnam. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been doing…I couldn’t find wipes in San Francisco or Burbank. We found hand sanitizer only after we asked a shop keeper in San Francisco who let us know he had a secret stash behind the counter. “One per family,” he said. Which seemed wise.)
– Not many people are using their tray tables or tucking things into their seat pocket. I predict a (further?) decline in readership of the in-flight mag, not to mention the safety brochure. One woman I saw using her tray table for her laptop was wearing a mask. Huh?
– My delta flight today (March 9) was delayed for cleaning but only a few minutes (and I welcomed the cleaning.) Southwest attendants wore gloves. But my delta flight attendant didn’t wear gloves while serving but did when picking up empty cups. (But she was very pleasant and offered a wider snack selection including granola bars than the other flights.)
– The occasional sneeze or cough (including by me…allergies. Really!) is more noticeable and noticed.
– My second flight had lots of empty seats. We all took our own aisles and window seats. (Maybe we read the same article saying that window seats exposure you to less germs.) Pleasant surprise for this aisle-flyer: it was fun looking out the window.
– Other flights, including the one I am on now, seem almost full (although I have no neighbor.) Maybe more people would cancel if the airlines (other than always reasonable Southwest) extended their Covid-9-inspired, no-charge-for-changes policy so it includes flights right now (not just those purchased between now and March 31. Thx guys but you could do better. Your self- interest is showing.)
– people are calm and pleasant. Not sure I would know anything was different if I didn’t read the news.
– I noticed new signs (I think) in the bathroom in Des Moines (some that could use copy editing) asking “travellers” (yes, misspelled) to wash their hands.
– I also found myself not holding onto the railing on the escalator, to avoid germs and making use of sanitizer stations.
TakeBetsywithyou 