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calimacThis is TMI, but I've found in the past that telling other people about your travails may amuse them.
Usually when you fly from one country to another, you arrive, you collect your baggage, and then you go through customs/immigration. That doesn't happen when you fly to the US from Calgary. Instead, there's a US Customs station embedded in front of the international concourse in the Calgary airport, so you go through customs first. That fact was my downfall.
It was still 90 minutes before my flight when I arrived, and, after a considerable tussle between two airlines as to which of them I was supposed to check in with for my code-share flight, the agent rather than taking my checked bag away pointed to the entrance to US Customs and told me to take it with me. "So I can't just leave the bag with them and go have lunch first, can I?" I said. "No, once you start you have to go through the whole thing," he said. "But there's food in the concourse."
The US Customs station is actually a series of stations, like unto the stations of the Cross, and only the last of them is traditional airport security. But, not knowing how many I would face, I was not yet alarmed as I passed through the first (making sure you have all your documents with you) and waited in a long albeit fast-moving line for the second (primary screening) in a large hall whose upper walls were festooned with giant photographs of stirring American patriotic scenes: the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, purple mountains majesty, amber waves of grain (the last two of which they actually do better in Alberta). I love these things as much as any American, but I'm a little nauseated by having them paraded that way. (They're also all over our new-model passport pages.)
After passing through that without incident, eventually there came a point where men whom I hoped were airport employees came and took our checked baggage away, but I was still waiting in long lines and the clock was ticking. Nor did anybody come by and announce that anyone on such-and-such a flight should skip the line and run ahead. By the time I actually got to the security post, it was five after, and they looked at my boarding pass and said, "Your flight has departed." I said, "I guessed that." They said, "Go to the gate and they'll deal with it there."
Having put my shoes back on and hitched my trousers up again (because I can't wear suspenders through the metal detector and I can't really put them on the trousers while wearing them, so I just wear my least-likely-to-droop and hope for the best on air travel days), I trudged with my heavy carry-on bags over to the gate. The electronic board still listed my flight with the word "departed." I handed my boarding pass to the agent and said, "I missed the flight. What do we do?" The agent said, "I'm not United. I'm Alaska." I pointed to the board which had the United logo in big letters. "It says United." The agent said, "Yes, but they've left, and the next flight from this gate is Alaska." "So where is United?" I asked. The agent fiddled with her terminal. "They're at gate 32."
Gate 32 was at the other end of the concourse. Trudge. There was nobody there and the electronic sign was blank. However, I checked the departures board down the hall and sure enough, the next United flight of the day was leaving from that gate, just not for another two hours. It was at this point that I phoned B. and told her I would not be home in time for dinner and why, and that I was still looking for an agent to assist me.
Eventually there came a time when an agent appeared, and further on there came a time when she returned from unloading an arriving flight, and eventually even a time when the more senior agent she said she needed to deal with my problem arrived. This agent looked my data up and said, "You booked with Air Canada. You need to go to them." "OK," I said, "where are they?" She phoned them, but nobody answered. Then she fiddled with her computer a while and finally gave me back my old boarding pass with a new seat number she'd written on it. "This is your seat number on your new flight," she said. "Uh, thank you," I said, "but what flight is that?" She rattled off a number. "Could you write that down too, please?" I asked. She added flight, gate, and time (another four hours off), and only then explained that, since Air Canada wasn't available inside the concourse, she'd rebooked me anyway (but their printer was broken) rather than force me to go out through Canadian customs to the main counter and back in again.
This was good, because rather than pass through the stations of the Cross again, I was fully prepared, had I been forced to leave the customs-cleared zone to rebook or because there were just no more flights that day, to rent a car, drive across the border by land, which is much less trouble, and fly home from Great Falls, Montana, which was the nearest US city with a commercial airport.
As I trudged back over to the new gate, which was near the old one, I passed a spot where I could overlook one of the areas I had waited in a long line. The entire area was deserted, save for the guy who'd taken my luggage, who looked up and waved at me. I had come in at the mid-day rush. It was now the mid-afternoon lull, which is why I'd had to wait over an hour for an agent to come to a United gate, and why I had another four hours until mine. It was near the end of that wait, over my second packaged Caesar salad with fetid cheese, by far the least unappetizing food on offer, that I wrote my plaintive little LJ post on my tablet over the airport's wifi.
The flight home was about as pleasant as a flight can be. It left on time, arrived early, was on a brand-new regional jet of supreme comfort, and I even had the seat row to myself. (Had the agent at gate 32 said something early on about not being able to accommodate me because the only other flight to SFO was overbooked? Maybe I imagined it.) My bag actually had been transferred as I'd been told, and it would only spoil the happy ending to tell how it took over an hour to get through the crowds onto the bus to the off-site parking lot, and how my car wouldn't start when I got there: the battery wasn't dead, the starter made horrible chittering noises instead.
Usually when you fly from one country to another, you arrive, you collect your baggage, and then you go through customs/immigration. That doesn't happen when you fly to the US from Calgary. Instead, there's a US Customs station embedded in front of the international concourse in the Calgary airport, so you go through customs first. That fact was my downfall.
It was still 90 minutes before my flight when I arrived, and, after a considerable tussle between two airlines as to which of them I was supposed to check in with for my code-share flight, the agent rather than taking my checked bag away pointed to the entrance to US Customs and told me to take it with me. "So I can't just leave the bag with them and go have lunch first, can I?" I said. "No, once you start you have to go through the whole thing," he said. "But there's food in the concourse."
The US Customs station is actually a series of stations, like unto the stations of the Cross, and only the last of them is traditional airport security. But, not knowing how many I would face, I was not yet alarmed as I passed through the first (making sure you have all your documents with you) and waited in a long albeit fast-moving line for the second (primary screening) in a large hall whose upper walls were festooned with giant photographs of stirring American patriotic scenes: the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, purple mountains majesty, amber waves of grain (the last two of which they actually do better in Alberta). I love these things as much as any American, but I'm a little nauseated by having them paraded that way. (They're also all over our new-model passport pages.)
After passing through that without incident, eventually there came a point where men whom I hoped were airport employees came and took our checked baggage away, but I was still waiting in long lines and the clock was ticking. Nor did anybody come by and announce that anyone on such-and-such a flight should skip the line and run ahead. By the time I actually got to the security post, it was five after, and they looked at my boarding pass and said, "Your flight has departed." I said, "I guessed that." They said, "Go to the gate and they'll deal with it there."
Having put my shoes back on and hitched my trousers up again (because I can't wear suspenders through the metal detector and I can't really put them on the trousers while wearing them, so I just wear my least-likely-to-droop and hope for the best on air travel days), I trudged with my heavy carry-on bags over to the gate. The electronic board still listed my flight with the word "departed." I handed my boarding pass to the agent and said, "I missed the flight. What do we do?" The agent said, "I'm not United. I'm Alaska." I pointed to the board which had the United logo in big letters. "It says United." The agent said, "Yes, but they've left, and the next flight from this gate is Alaska." "So where is United?" I asked. The agent fiddled with her terminal. "They're at gate 32."
Gate 32 was at the other end of the concourse. Trudge. There was nobody there and the electronic sign was blank. However, I checked the departures board down the hall and sure enough, the next United flight of the day was leaving from that gate, just not for another two hours. It was at this point that I phoned B. and told her I would not be home in time for dinner and why, and that I was still looking for an agent to assist me.
Eventually there came a time when an agent appeared, and further on there came a time when she returned from unloading an arriving flight, and eventually even a time when the more senior agent she said she needed to deal with my problem arrived. This agent looked my data up and said, "You booked with Air Canada. You need to go to them." "OK," I said, "where are they?" She phoned them, but nobody answered. Then she fiddled with her computer a while and finally gave me back my old boarding pass with a new seat number she'd written on it. "This is your seat number on your new flight," she said. "Uh, thank you," I said, "but what flight is that?" She rattled off a number. "Could you write that down too, please?" I asked. She added flight, gate, and time (another four hours off), and only then explained that, since Air Canada wasn't available inside the concourse, she'd rebooked me anyway (but their printer was broken) rather than force me to go out through Canadian customs to the main counter and back in again.
This was good, because rather than pass through the stations of the Cross again, I was fully prepared, had I been forced to leave the customs-cleared zone to rebook or because there were just no more flights that day, to rent a car, drive across the border by land, which is much less trouble, and fly home from Great Falls, Montana, which was the nearest US city with a commercial airport.
As I trudged back over to the new gate, which was near the old one, I passed a spot where I could overlook one of the areas I had waited in a long line. The entire area was deserted, save for the guy who'd taken my luggage, who looked up and waved at me. I had come in at the mid-day rush. It was now the mid-afternoon lull, which is why I'd had to wait over an hour for an agent to come to a United gate, and why I had another four hours until mine. It was near the end of that wait, over my second packaged Caesar salad with fetid cheese, by far the least unappetizing food on offer, that I wrote my plaintive little LJ post on my tablet over the airport's wifi.
The flight home was about as pleasant as a flight can be. It left on time, arrived early, was on a brand-new regional jet of supreme comfort, and I even had the seat row to myself. (Had the agent at gate 32 said something early on about not being able to accommodate me because the only other flight to SFO was overbooked? Maybe I imagined it.) My bag actually had been transferred as I'd been told, and it would only spoil the happy ending to tell how it took over an hour to get through the crowds onto the bus to the off-site parking lot, and how my car wouldn't start when I got there: the battery wasn't dead, the starter made horrible chittering noises instead.
