Yeah, expedia.com totally dropped the ball on my flight plans yesterday. Imagine this: you arrive at the airport at 5am, your the first one to check in, you sit down, relax, then board your plane. At 5:57am, 3mins before departure, and after you’ve been sitting on the plane for 10 mins , you get paged to go back up to the check-in desk. The problem? According to the records your flight is confirmed but un-pain. Umm, what? Yep, expedia voided my freaking tickets, but kept me confirmed on the flight (I don’t even get how that’s freaking possible to begin with but that’s what Delta told me) and have me listed as “un -paid, collect at check-in”. Yeah, I paid for my flight nearly 4 weeks ago. Got the debit statement to prove it. Gotta love it.

So yesteday was one big headache. I missed my 6am departure but I had to go back out, past security, to deal with Delta and figure out what the hell happened. So, this is what we think went down (meaning me and Delta)…

When I originally purchased my round-trip flight on expedia.com I mistakenly booked it May 13 – May 17th from LaGuardia to Wilmington. Oops, it was supposed to me May 14 – 18 out of Islip MacArthur to Wilmington. I called expedia not even 5 mins after it was booked to notify them of my error and to cancel the flight, which they did, they said it was “no problem, everything is taken care of”. They gave me my cancellation number and said that the only cost I would incur would be the $5 booking fee which was non-refundable. Ok, no big deal. About 2 hours later I re-booked my flight with the correct departure date and airport. Two completely different itineraries on two different dates. Shouldn’t have been an issue, right? Apparently I was mistaken.

So, fast forward to yesterday, be sobbing at the Delta ticket counter at MacArthur airport. First off I should start off by saying that Delta handled everything wonderfully. I could not imagine any other airline that I’ve ever delt with bending over backwards for me and helping me out like they did. The ticket lady, who is a God-send in my eyes, researched everything that had to do with me, my name, my freaking address, and the card number that I used when I booked the flights. She said what she thinks happened is that expedia didn’t void out the first flight plans right away like I was lead to believe. She said that as it turns out, and I hope I don’t confuse you too much with this is, that the May 13th departure out of LaGuardia was kept, but the May 14th out of MacArthur was voided. Now, she thinks that the May 17th departure out of Wilmington was voided, like it should have been, and the correct departure on May 18th is still good. She had me run over to US Airways to confirm (FYI – the US Airways ticket lady seemed thoroughly confused by what I was saying and asking for her to look up, can we say “deer caught in headlights” look). Anyways, everything looks ok for my departure on the 18th but I guess we’ll find out for sure on Friday – keep posted.

Now, here’s the part where I feel like Delta went above and beyond the call of duty: Delta, instead of making me wait at MacArthur for the next flight to Atlanta (where I would have a layover before going to Wilmington), which wasn’t going to happen till 1:30pm that afternoon, they re-booked me on a 10am flight out of LaGuardia and PAID for a private car service from MacArthur to LaGuardia. How freaking fantastic is that?!?!?!

I have to say, they did a great job, I’m very much greatful for their help and understand during that ordeal. I know they didn’t have to do that.

So the rest of my trip was ok, I got to LaGuardia by 9am, checked in, had some Starbucks and boarded my flight to Atlanta. OMG the plane to Atlanta had those little TV screens on the back of each seat – I’ve only seen on the International flights! So I got to watch TV (they had like 20 or so channels to chose from) and had some soda and the standard peanuts. In Atlanta I made my way from terminal B to C and got the last stand-by seat on the 1:30p flight to Wilmington; I arrived at 2:30pm.

Now, here’s the part that made me almost forget everything – when I got off the plane and made my way over to the baggage area, there was my cousin holding Maya. Maya put her arms out, had a big smile and announced “Ta-ta’s here!!!” and jumped into my arms. She gave me this big squishy hug and kiss. It made it all better, it was almost worth it just to have this little person do that to me.

I love that kid. And I now love Delta too.