so on the friday before i left i tried to check in for my flights online. it's generally easier and i kind of like knowing that i have a head start on the whole thing. well. the confusion was that my flight was the return portion of my reward flight. and the week before two of the three flights needed to be rescheduled due to a cancellation (though i actually recieved some bonus miles because of this, which was AWESOME on the part of northwest). so the flights were booked through northwest. but my first flight was on delta, because northwest doesn't fly to costa rica (but delta is a "partner" for miles). so when i tried to check in on the northwest site i couldn't, because you must choose a departure city, and san jose isn't on their list. so i tried to check in on the delta site, but of my three flights home, they only had the first one correct - theirs. (the other two flights were on northwest)
so after i panicked a little, i decided that i would just go to the airport in the morning and sort it out then. well. when i checked in they printed out a boarding pass for my flight out of costa rica and for one of the flights that i was no longer taking and nothing for the flight that would actually take me to boston. though they seemed to understand that my bag should go through to boston. i decided to try to sort all this out with the northwest agents in atlanta.
so i arrive in atlanta (after a lovely flight in FIRST CLASS - my first time ever!) and because we've arrived internationally we have to collect all of our luggage, go through customs, and then recheck everything to our final destination. before just blindly throwing my bag on the belt to be rechecked, i decided to talk to one of the customer service agents to sort out all the nonsense. well i was in concourse E, which happens to only contain delta agents. so i go chat to this woman anyway, to see if she can help.
well, her computer is showing that i'm still on my canceled flights. which i tell i her i am not. so she tries to call northwest, but is somehow unable to speak to a real person (in retrospect this woman was not really helpful in the least). so what she can do is check my bag out of the airport - like atlanta was my final destination. so i would have to go all the way out to the south terminal, collect my bag from baggage claim there and then i can go to the northwest check-in desk on the north terminal and sort everything out with them and THEN go back through security and to concourse D, where my flight was leaving from. in about 40 minutes.
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there's a train which connects all these parts - atlanta is a BIG airport
so obviously my bag is not on the baggage carousel by the time i've gotten out there. and i wait for what seems like FOREVER for it. finally it shows up and i run over to the northwest desk (cut to the front of the line because i'm a FIRST CLASS customer) and the woman is like, "oh, it looks like you've already checked in for these flights". super. but now it's too late to check my big bag (which contains - GASP! - liquids larger than 3 oz.!) so i'm pissed, run over to security, which is not that long of a line, thankfully, and i start tearing through my bag to get the liquids out and squeeze them into my quart-sized ziploc - which now no longer closes. luckily i breeze through security with no hassles and then i'm back on the train for concourse E.
so i'm hustling to the gate and luckily there are still some people waiting in line to board. again, being first class i cut to the front, and get on pretty quickly. i plop down in my cushy, first class seat, and the flight attendant says to me:
"can i get you something to drink?"
yes you can.
okay, so that feels like plenty of complaining for today. if you can imagine, the trip back was worse.
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