Flying 101

Since it’s the holiday season where it’s kind of the peak period for traveling, I thought I have to share this. I don’t know if this is common knowledge, but it’s definitely important for first time airplane traveler should know.

When your flight is delayed, it is the airline’s responsibility to work it out for you if it will cause you to miss your connecting flight, or severely hinder your travel plans.

My mum and brother were flying last Sunday, and it was an absolute nightmare dealing with American Airlines. Their 8am flight was delayed by an hour and 15 minutes which result in them missing their connecting flight to Houston IAH airport. Now here’s the problem.

1. They made all of us use the self check-in stations.
   Is this now the norm? I understand that some people like to check-in online or on their phones, but I can’t imagine everyone getting on the tech-savvy bandwagon. Like if we were flying on a budget airline and we have to pay extra to have our boarding tickets printed. We weren’t though. American Airlines is a full service airline.
2. The self check-in station should have referred us to the counter when it shows that we would not make it for the connecting flight.
   In theory, yes we could have just picked our connecting flight on the screen, but it was more complicated than it sounds. They gave us like three options that we had to choose from, and they barely looked any different from each other besides being 15, 30 minutes apart. We ended up picking the flight that reaches Houston the earliest because my mum and brother had an international flight to catch in the evening.
3. After confirming the flights, we then realized the screen only showed the two connecting flights to HOU airport instead of three flights to IAH airport.
   It was a mistake on our part, and we had to then queue in another line to speak to someone at the counter. We were still fine with it at this moment. I was amused that this self check-in process that’s meant to make the whole boarding process more efficient ended up creating a bigger hassle for us and American Airlines.
4. When we finally got to the counter, the American Airlines staff told us to take a shuttle from HOU airport to IAH airport if we wanted to catch our international flight.
   This was an absolute no-no for me that she did that. My mum and brother should not be lugging two personal baggages, two carry on luggages and two check in luggages from HOU airport all the way to IAH airport because of a flight delay. I don’t even know if they would be able to collect their luggage at HOU airport because they are technically suppose to wait for their later flight to IAH airport. Also, she had no idea how long the shuttle from HOU airport to IAH airport is, or the frequency of the shuttle.
5. The American Airlines staff recommended us to take a taxi from HOU airport to IAH airport if we do not want to take the airport shuttle.
   Why should we pay for their delay? (I just googled and it will cost about $70 by taxi and $40 by Uber.) We might as well pay for a direct flight to IAH airport if we knew we had to fork in more money and go through so much hassle, especially since they still had a 20+ hours flight back to Singapore after that.
6. We had to continuously insist that American Airlines to get us to IAH airport on time, so that they would be able to make it for their international flight. It should not have been so difficult.
   It felt like we had to hustle our way to get the American Airlines staff to refer us to another airline to get us to our destination on time. I knew that it was possible for them to do that because I have had flights cancelled on me. I just wish they would actually listen to our situation and provided us a reasonable solution. I mean, even if we do not have an international flight to catch at IAH airport, we should not have to take a 9.15am flight from TUL to reach IAH airport around 5pm because the rest of their flights are fully booked.

Ultimately, do not accept unreasonable alternatives from the airlines. If it was just an hour or two of delay, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal.

That’s really just the price airlines have to incur if they have any flight delays on top of fully booked flights. Do not let the airlines interrupt your travel plans by more than three hours unless it’s due to weather or natural disasters.

What do you think?

Also, another thing we learnt is that you should always try to book US domestic flights that are from the same airline alliance of your international flight. That may allow you to save on your check-in baggage charges.