Grifdog22
Barking Mad!
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2008
Adventures in chaos - Our pre-day and day one that wasn't.
This is the only negative posting and does not deal with the actual ABD portion of the trip, but only our bad start. For a trip report, jump to day two.
So we began our trip to Australia by going to a Marriott near the airport for their Park Fly and Sleep program. We can leave our car for the whole trip, they shuttle us to and from the airport and at our return time (if American Airlines can successfully get a plane off the ground) at midnight, we crash at the hotel on return. We were going early for a pre-day. We were due to leave on Thursday June 15, 2017 from Baltimore Maryland (we live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) but we had seen AA cancel a lot of flights on Wednesday, with no weather problems, so we thought we would try to get an earlier flight. We arrived at 7:00 am in Baltimore for a 6:35 pm flight out; the Marriott people were great, shuttled us over, made sure we had a call number for return, and promised to take care of our car. We arrived at the airport four flights before ours was to leave, three were substantially overbooked, and one had four seats! It was about to depart - but AA would not let us move up our flight to an earlier flight, without paying $500 per person. It left with four empty seats. In hindsight, we should have paid the extra $2000.00.
Our flight was delayed, delayed again, and again. No weather issues, no rhyme or reason. We repeatedly hoped for a mechanical issue on the big plane from Dallas to Sydney, so it would be delayed enough to catch it. Nope. We missed the connection from Dallas to Sydney by many hours. So after waiting patiently for AA “customer service” to tell us that they could not rebook us, our baggage was forwarded to the international terminal and it would be 4-6 hours before we could retrieve it, and no hotel assistance or anything – just get out of their way. We watched what could easily have turned into an angry mob scene with the really nasty presentations of AA as there were lots of other flights like ours. It's now about 1:30 am, having been in an AA terminal or plane for 18 hours (lucky us!). I quickly called a Marriott and they picked us up within minutes, to hit the hotel at 2 am while the rest of the flight was still getting screwed by AA. Thanks to this board, we found great trip insurance which covered our pre and post and activity days. I called, they advised everything was covered, and immediately emailed me a claim form (THANK YOU Say Hello!) At 3:00 am online I was able to rebook for the next flight with Qantas but perfectly awful seats in the very back. I also called the ABD 24 hour hotline, and within an hour I had an e-mail to Suzanne and Amber, our guides, and they told us to relax, they would be in touch.
AA had told us that we would have to "reclaim" our luggage not later than 8 am the next morning as we had no flight scheduled as we had missed ours (with no help from them fixing their booking partner's flight). So we arrived at the terminal after four hours sleep only to be told we would have to wait "awhile" to take care of that. Awhile in Texas means 12 hours.
Nevertheless, that evening we hopped aboard this massive A380 double decker Qantas plane. Remember that mechanical issue we were hoping for? Yep, we got our wish. Our re-booked plane had mechanical problems. Two hours and the mechanics still working on it, and the flight crew starting to time out for dispatch. All we could hear in the way back in the steerage section where we were squatting was multiple drills going and going…not a good or comfortable sound!
So yet another night trapped in Dallas; however Qantas treated us very nicely. Hotel, food, everything. It was a full 24 hours before we departed (with two Quantas A3-80s now scheduled to depart the same time….) Again, an update to "Suzamber" who told us they would have a car waiting when we arrived late.
We had tried to leave Virginia Wednesday morning with pre-days scheduled and arrived in Sydney Monday morning just in time to pick up day two of the ABD trip. We missed surfing at Manly Beach, great tickets for the Sydney Symphony in the main hall at the Opera House and spa treatments for all at the Shangra La, swimming in the Olympic pool and a bike tour through Sydney. That’s all the bad we’ll say on this trip report - End of the negatives as there is no way in HELL we will ever do business with AA again, so no worries in the future, right?
Here we are flying 17 hours across to the other side of the world, and grateful for the warm inside...versus the temperature outside!
And then landing...this is a picture taken by a camera mounted on the tail of the plane, broadcast to the inside the plane of the plane as it is landing...
This is the only negative posting and does not deal with the actual ABD portion of the trip, but only our bad start. For a trip report, jump to day two.
So we began our trip to Australia by going to a Marriott near the airport for their Park Fly and Sleep program. We can leave our car for the whole trip, they shuttle us to and from the airport and at our return time (if American Airlines can successfully get a plane off the ground) at midnight, we crash at the hotel on return. We were going early for a pre-day. We were due to leave on Thursday June 15, 2017 from Baltimore Maryland (we live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) but we had seen AA cancel a lot of flights on Wednesday, with no weather problems, so we thought we would try to get an earlier flight. We arrived at 7:00 am in Baltimore for a 6:35 pm flight out; the Marriott people were great, shuttled us over, made sure we had a call number for return, and promised to take care of our car. We arrived at the airport four flights before ours was to leave, three were substantially overbooked, and one had four seats! It was about to depart - but AA would not let us move up our flight to an earlier flight, without paying $500 per person. It left with four empty seats. In hindsight, we should have paid the extra $2000.00.
Our flight was delayed, delayed again, and again. No weather issues, no rhyme or reason. We repeatedly hoped for a mechanical issue on the big plane from Dallas to Sydney, so it would be delayed enough to catch it. Nope. We missed the connection from Dallas to Sydney by many hours. So after waiting patiently for AA “customer service” to tell us that they could not rebook us, our baggage was forwarded to the international terminal and it would be 4-6 hours before we could retrieve it, and no hotel assistance or anything – just get out of their way. We watched what could easily have turned into an angry mob scene with the really nasty presentations of AA as there were lots of other flights like ours. It's now about 1:30 am, having been in an AA terminal or plane for 18 hours (lucky us!). I quickly called a Marriott and they picked us up within minutes, to hit the hotel at 2 am while the rest of the flight was still getting screwed by AA. Thanks to this board, we found great trip insurance which covered our pre and post and activity days. I called, they advised everything was covered, and immediately emailed me a claim form (THANK YOU Say Hello!) At 3:00 am online I was able to rebook for the next flight with Qantas but perfectly awful seats in the very back. I also called the ABD 24 hour hotline, and within an hour I had an e-mail to Suzanne and Amber, our guides, and they told us to relax, they would be in touch.
AA had told us that we would have to "reclaim" our luggage not later than 8 am the next morning as we had no flight scheduled as we had missed ours (with no help from them fixing their booking partner's flight). So we arrived at the terminal after four hours sleep only to be told we would have to wait "awhile" to take care of that. Awhile in Texas means 12 hours.
Nevertheless, that evening we hopped aboard this massive A380 double decker Qantas plane. Remember that mechanical issue we were hoping for? Yep, we got our wish. Our re-booked plane had mechanical problems. Two hours and the mechanics still working on it, and the flight crew starting to time out for dispatch. All we could hear in the way back in the steerage section where we were squatting was multiple drills going and going…not a good or comfortable sound!
So yet another night trapped in Dallas; however Qantas treated us very nicely. Hotel, food, everything. It was a full 24 hours before we departed (with two Quantas A3-80s now scheduled to depart the same time….) Again, an update to "Suzamber" who told us they would have a car waiting when we arrived late.
We had tried to leave Virginia Wednesday morning with pre-days scheduled and arrived in Sydney Monday morning just in time to pick up day two of the ABD trip. We missed surfing at Manly Beach, great tickets for the Sydney Symphony in the main hall at the Opera House and spa treatments for all at the Shangra La, swimming in the Olympic pool and a bike tour through Sydney. That’s all the bad we’ll say on this trip report - End of the negatives as there is no way in HELL we will ever do business with AA again, so no worries in the future, right?
Here we are flying 17 hours across to the other side of the world, and grateful for the warm inside...versus the temperature outside!
And then landing...this is a picture taken by a camera mounted on the tail of the plane, broadcast to the inside the plane of the plane as it is landing...
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