AA@Your_Dis-service

Last week I experienced less than smooth trip to Green Bay. It started out with promise. I was booked on flight AA47 from DFW to ORD with a cushy seat assignment in the business class section of a Boeing 777 and a dawdling 2 hour connection to the American Eagle flight to GRB. The weather was good all along the route with everything projected to be on time.

All went well until I got to the gate. In place of a boarding announcement, they instead perkily announced that the completely booked flight was cancelled! A cancelled Boeing 777 creates approximately 250 very disgruntled individuals, particularly those 50 or so First and Business class passengers, yours truly included.

If you’ve flown recently, you know there might be one or two open seats on any airplane these days, so I immediately knew I faced a challenge. Flashing my Platinum status at the Admirals Club, I was able to secure a seat that nobody else seemed to want (right next to the engine in the back row) on a flight departing 2 hours later. This trumped the AA elite flyer auto rebooking “service” that left me a message (as I was boarding my flight) informing me I had a reservation for a flight the next day!

Needless to say, it was a very late arrival in Green Bay. Couldn’t leave the airport until I had filed the lost baggage report with America Eagle. I decided to stay at a hotel two miles from the airport to ensure a quick bag delivery as soon as it got in, hopefully (the agent said) that same evening. After checking into the hotel, informing the clerk about my pending bag arrival, I walked a few blocks to a restaurant for dinner. Got a new perspective there on what can be called “lettuce wraps” (but that’s another story). Walked back to the hotel, no bag, so called the wonderfully automated AA bi-lingual baggage service and eventually was told that my bag would arrive at the airport sometime the next day (“that’s all the information that’s available at this time”).

The next morning I repeated the automated phone drill. I mis-hit a button on the phone prompt and a miracle happened: I got a human being! She said it was scheduled for delivery at 8:30am. Not ideal, but OK.

My call at 9:00 revealed that my bag was given to a delivery service at 8:30. Ditto this information for my call at 10:00. My 11:00 call yielded an unhappy tidbit – AA gives their delivery service up to 6 hours to make the delivery! I finally checked out of the hotel at noon. Since I was so close to the airport, I decided to drive over and put an eyeball on baggage claim. No bag. Talked to the counter folks who confirmed that they had given it to their baggage delivery service at 8:30 with RUSH status. Then they noticed the delivery van was parked outside. They paged the representative who eventually wandered over. He confirmed he had indeed picked up the bag . . . and that it was still in his delivery van! The irony surrounding this situation is that the delivery service’ name is: Quick!

I will jeopardize my elite status with AA (whose value is a bit questionable) and again favor Midwest Airlines for my future Wisconsin trips. Should never have changed.

Zero to Sixty . . .

. . . in a heartbeat, or so it seemed. Although the logical side of me estimates it really took more like 3 billion or so, it only took a single heartbeat to cross into another decade of my life--and it occurred in the wee morning hours of 08-08-08. Actually I think it was significant enough to wake both of us! My BBL murmured “Happy Birthday” and went back to sleep. I, in turn, began contemplating my mortality.

Had to remind myself that I was turning 60 and not 65! Although I have looked older than my age for quite awhile now (my hair having turned white in my early 40’s). Perhaps that is the reason I’ve always seemed to relate better to older people, although I never actually wanted to be one of them! For whatever reason, this birthday certainly felt different than previous “big ones” (40, 50, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59); it’s probably because I just plain feel old(er). The events of the past year have conspired to make me feel more like what I imagined 70 or 75 might be like!

In an effort to recapture my youth (and taking advantage of being in the Chicago area), I invited three of my oldest local contemporaries to a birthday lunch: TL and Wiley Joe were working with the company when I showed up (they’re now retired) and Steepo has the distinction of being number two in sales seniority (after yours truly). My strategy didn’t work – the retirees looked great even though they’re closer to 70 than they are to me (and also have had more than their share of health issues). And #2 still looks like he did in 1998!

Old age – better than the alternative—and definitely not for sissies. Like Steve Martin, guess I'll just have to learn to like it.