2004
Monday, July 26
Lodging: USA!

Gregg's flight (Swiss 1735) departs at 7am and arrives in Zurich at 9am. Next, flight 52 (Swiss) departs Zurich at 10:20am and arrives in Boston at 12:40pm (if only it was really less than 3 hours). Finally (like 6.5 hours later), Gregg departs Boston at 7:09pm on American flight 1987 (nice flight #!) and arrives in St. Louis at 9:07pm.

Erica's flight (Continental 0041) departs at 9:45am and arrives in Newark at 1:25pm. Then, she departs Newark at 2:50pm (Continental flight 0353) and arrives in Columbus at 4:32pm (sometimes it pays to pay...)

This was the plan... It was a decent plan, but the last few days of our trip should have told us it was not going to work out according to plan.

In order for Gregg to make the early flight, we set the alarm for 4:21am. This allowed time to get up, leave the hotel, take a taxi to the train station, take a train to the airport, go through customs, check-in for the flight, etc.

Unfortunately, the alarm went off and Gregg shut it off without ever knowing he had done so... Erica remembered hearing the alarm and seeing Gregg shut it off, but fell back asleep. She awoke in a panic at 6:44am (21 minutes before my flight left Rome). Needless to say, I missed my flight. I have no recollection of hearing, seeing and shutting off the alarm.

We scrambled to get to the airport as fast as possible. We got there by 8:30am (almost 2 hours after we woke up). Erica was able to make her flight just fine, but mine was a big question mark. I went to check-in for Swiss Air (first flight) and they directed me to ticketing. Ticketing directed me to American Airlines to work out the problem. Once I got past security guards with serious uzis, I waited in line for an hour at American Airlines. Once I was able to talk to them, they started ignoring me and only said that they need to take care of passengers first (I was a passenger, but missing my flight made me a non-passenger evidently). They gave me a hand-written phone number before totally ignoring me.

Unfortunately, no phones existed on this side of security, so I had to go back through lines I had already gotten through (people everywhere). The payphone was in a loud, busy portion of the airport and I had trouble hearing). I also had to recharge my calling card in order to make any calls. The number they gave me was supposedly for American Airlines customer service in Italy. I called, but no answer... I also tried the US 800 number but kept getting disconnected in the middle of the call (some compatibility issue between the pay phone, calling card and Italian phone system I suppose). I had to go back through security again to go talk to American Airlines again. I had figured out that the quickest way there was to actually go outside and re-enter a different door.

Once I got back to American Airlines, I tried to ask about the number but they kept ignoring me. I would not be ignored and just wanted to know if I was reading the number properly. It turns out last digit was a 9, not a 4 as it looked on the hand-written note. This means I got to go back through security and try again on the phones. I did...

This time, I actually got American Airlines customer service in Italy on the phone! I had great difficulty hearing her and she had trouble understanding me. Eventually, I was able to communciate the confirmation number and she then transferred me to AAdvantage. Soon thereafter I started speaking to Bob who was extremely helpful. He had to go back to the drawing board (as he said a couple of times) to figure out how they could get me out of Rome and back to St. Louis. American Airlines only had two flights departing Rome that day and both were overbooked. He was able to get me a flight at 12:55pm on Swiss headed for Zurich, Switzerland to connect with a flight to New York. Then, the best he could do was connect me to St. Louis on Tuesday morning at 7am (12 hours after I arrive in New York). He did mention, however, that I should be able to fly stand by on a flight to Chicago tonight and then to St. Louis. He said we would put a note in the system that I intended to try and make these connections. He also stated I would have to go back to the American Airlines counter to get the re-issued tickets and pay a $100 charge fee (he could do nothing about the fee). Although I am never pleased about such a high fee, I was just happy to be heading in the right direction sometime today. I thanked him several times and he gave his extension in case I had any problems. I wish the customer service was this good with each employee at American Airlines (especially the ones that were just ignoring me)!

I went back through security again, went to American Airlines again (their line was now gone), paid the fee, got the tickets and now had two hours before the flight (10:30am, so all this took about 2 hours to resolve). I went to the bathroom and used the time to change clothes, shave and eat.

So now my flight plan was to go from Rome to Zurich, Zurich to New York, New York to Chicago (if possible via standby), Chicago to St. Louis (if possible via standby) or New York to St. Louis the next morning. I am happy to say I made the standby flights and got to St. Louis by 11:20pm (about 2 hours after I was originally scheduled to arrive, which was not too bad considering I missed the first flight in Rome and was told I would most likely have to spend another night in Rome and try again). Zurich was an interesting airport. It looked very new (but most likely was not, just well kept with lots of money) and had moving walkways that went up and down with 40 degreee inclines (never seen this before). The gates were essentially on two different levels and the walkways were used to move people up or down accordingly.

When I finally made it home, Eric Skelton was able to pick me up and give me a ride home. After traveling for 24 hours, I crashed.