I'm Going Nowhere, Somebody Help Me

United Airlines outdid themselves yesterday. They managed to lose my luggage even though I didn't fly anywhere.

On the scale of life's trails, my experience with United doesn't exactly rank with "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Nonetheless, I suspect that if Dante were updating his inferno for the modern age, surely airports would features as one of the circles of Hell.

I was supposed to fly to Austin, Texas from Dulles Airport yesterday afternoon for a meeting at the University of Texas. Wanting to avoid rush hour, I arrived at the airport around 2.5 hours before my scheduled departure. And then I made my critical mistake: I checked a bag.

Since I checked in online and the afternoon push hadn't started yet, I whizzed through check-in and security. I violated the first rule of airport karma by assuming that all was going well and unusually fast. I've had days when I've had to wait an hour to check-in on the line reserved for business class passengers. However, the airport gods don't like you to presume.

The reason for the endless delay of my flight was unusually lame even for the airlines. No, it wasn't weather. Weather is frustrating but causes genuine problems. No, it wasn't mechanical problems with the plane. One wishes planes were always problem free but I imagine I am glad that they don't let them fly when they are having mechanical problems.

In this case, the weather was fine at both the departure and destination airports, and the plane was supposedly in tip-top shape and parked at the gate.

The problem was that United lacked a crew to fly the plane.

You would think finding a new crew wouldn't be that difficult since Dulles is a United hub but the crew apparently had to be flown up from Charlotte and they were delayed because their plane had mechanical problems.

So United pulled the slow motion, endless series of delays rope-a-dope when they further delay the flight every couple of hours by a couple more hours until it is canceled. If you checked bags, like myself, you had no hope because they couldn't switch you to another flight.

United was unusually bad, even for the airlines, throughout the situation. Announcements were made only sporadically (as in hours apart)--the passengers were a better source of information. The gate was left unmanned for awhile when an agent left at the end of her shift. We through three different gate agents during our stay at Gate D14. Agents there and at the oddly-named "customer service" desk had about zero interest in finding out or conveying information to us.

The "customer service" desk nearest to D14 had one person when I was there and thus an endless wait so I trekked over to C concourse when I finally decided to pack it in and go home at 9pm. They did issue a refund and gave me a coupon of United funny money which is very difficult to use not just because it has the usual panoply of airline limitations but has to be presented in person at the airport.

The "customer service" desk can't help with bags so I had to go to baggage handling. Phyllis in baggage handling insisted I wait because they were going "right now" to get my bag off the small plane. She agreed grudgingly to have my bags delivered about 50 minutes later when they still hadn't shown up.

The evening was topped off by an automatic computer call to my cell phone announcing that my flight had been canceled about 30 minutes after I arrived home.

It turns out that it was a work of fiction that they were locating my bag. It is now over 24 hours since my flight was supposed to have departed and United still can't find the bag. I've spent several hours on the phone trying to navigate the mouse maze of call routing lines. The baggage handling line hung up on me after a recorded voice announced the termination of the call with a quick mention of not wanting to waste my time.

I went through seven different "customer service" people who constantly gave me new numbers to call (with new call routing systems) and promised to stay on the line while they transferred me (and then didn't) but who repeatedly told me how valued I was as a United Premier member even as they proceeded to do absolutely nothing to help me.

Later this afternoon, someone finally admitted that my bags had been flown to Austin today. However, they're still missing in action.

Well, I guess I should be glad something got to travel.