Changes

On Sunday morning, I checked in for my Monday morning 7:15am flight to Boston like normal. I even got to take advantage of my new 'elite status' to pick a better seat for the crowded flight.

Later in the day I was checking my e-mail when I noticed an e-mail from one of the DBAs in Cambridge warning me that they were supposed to have a horrible snow storm on Monday morning, and so suggesting that I change my flight plans. I checked on the Northwest site, and my flight was still scheduled on-time, so I decided to just go with it.

Later that evening, I checked again, only to find that Northwest had canceled my flight and re-booked me on a 7:10am flight to Indianapolis followed by a 1:30pm flight to Boston. Not interested in a 5 hour layover, only to (probably) get stranded in Indianapolis, I had my company's travel people change my trip to Tuesday - Friday instead of Mon - Thurs. It took a bit of doing, but they were able to get it all straightened out as well as get my hotel stay changed.

So this morning when I got to work at about 7:20, I went to check-in for my flight tomorrow, only to have the web site say that I couldn't because my plane had already left. Uh-oh.

So I called the travel people at my company, who said that everything looked correct on their end (which it did from the website as well). So then I called Northwest, got routed around a bit and eventually got someone who said they would resolve it.

So I went back to check-in and about halfway through the process, a message came up saying that my Monday the 14th flight had been removed, and did I want to continue? That made me nervous, so instead of clicking the final 'check-in', I went back to look at my reservations.

There I found a flight to Indianapolis on the 14th, a flight to Boston on the 15th, and one back from Boston on the 18th. So I called NWA back again, to request that they remove the orphaned flight to Indy. Which they did.

So I went back to check-in again. Only to discover that removing the flight to Indy had also, for some reason, removed my flight home from Boston. Another call to NWA, and that flight was back.

So I went back to check-in, only to get a message saying that I couldn't check-in because changes had been made to the E-Ticket since it was originally created. Oh, really? I hadn't noticed.

So I called NWA back once more. That analyst said "jeez, look at all these changes on the ticket. Maybe someone doesn't want you to travel.". To which I must admit I responded without much humor. After waiting on hold for about 10 minutes, they eventually came back and basically said "You can't check in on the web".

In theory, I will be able to check in at the airport tomorrow, or so they assured me. I won't be holding my breath. I figure there's approximately a zero-percent chance that I will be able to get on both flights without trouble.

Even better, after all this work to change things up, Boston is supposed to get more snow tomorrow morning as well as Friday. So even if my tickets aren't screwed up, the weather probably will be.

Here's to probably writing tomorrow's blog post from the Detroit, Indianapolis, or Memphis airports!