On the road again...

Later this week we hit the road again. This installment of Adventures with Smiling Mama takes us to San Diego, CA. More specifically, to Poway, CA to visit my lovely sister and her "two BIIIIIIG dogs" as Lucas calls them. Sarah's husband recently deployed to Iraq and so we wanted to get out to visit her in early fall. And, lo and behold, Ohio State happens to be playing USC this Saturday so WHAT PERFECT TIMING that we're going out there this weekend of all possible weekends.

I booked our plane tickets in March with Abel swearing he'd be able to score us tickets to the game (you see, a holiday weekend would have been a much more convenient time to visit my sister who is a teacher). He pulled through (more specifically his friend Doug's dad pulled through) so he and I will drive up to LA Saturday morning for the game.

It ends up that quite a few of our Buckeye friends are also flying in for the game so it should be a lot of fun. And, Sarah won't miss any quality time with her nephew as he'll stay with her so I don't have to feel guilty for being gone for approx. 30 hours of our already-too-short visit.

What I am upset about, however, is our stupid airline. As I mentioned, I booked our tickets in March. A few weeks ago I received a phone call and e-mail that they changed our flight. I'm outraged and told them as much in the following message:



To Whom it May Concern,

Last March I booked three tickets for my husband, toddler son and myself to fly from Dulles, VA to San Diego, CA on YOUR AIRLINE. Despite the fact that the YOUR AIRLINE fares were slightly higher than other airlines, we chose to book our flights with your airline because we wanted a direct flight.

You see, we are flying cross-country with a 2 ½ year old and we figured it was worth it to pay a slight premium to have the lowest travel time and not have to change planes. We flew YOUR AIRLINE once before and enjoyed our experience. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we recently opened our first-ever airline miles credit card, a YOUR AIRLINE American Express.

Recently, I was informed that our scheduled flights were changed. We were moved from direct round trip flights from Dulles to San Diego to flights which took us through Boston.

Previously we left Dulles at 5:50pm and arrived in San Diego at 7:56pm. On the new flight we will leave Dulles at 2:50pm, connect in Boston and arrive in San Diego at 8:31pm. With this change, our total travel time increased by more than 2.5 hours.

On our return flight, we initially left San Diego at 10:30pm and arrived in Dulles at 6:24am. With the change we depart San Diego at 10:45pm, connect through Boston and arrive at Dulles at 10:45am. With this change, our travel time for this leg increased by 3 hours.

That is a total increase in travel time of more than 5.5 hours.

I find this to be unacceptable.

When we were informed of the change we decided we would cancel our YOUR AIRLINE flights. We found comparably priced direct flights on Southwest. Upon calling customer service, however, I found that we could not get a refund, that it is your prerogative to change our flight.

I am so angry. I don’t understand how you can move us from a direct flight to a stop-over in Boston, increasing our travel time by 5.5 hours and still charge us the same price as our original flight.

I feel we deserve compensation for this dramatic increase in our travel-time. In the meantime, I plan to cancel my YOUR AIRLINE American Express card and will think twice before booking a flight on YOUR AIRLINE again.


Sincerely,


Smiling Mama