Travel China and Beyond

Travel Problems — Airline issues

So, this past week I was supposed to fly (with my family) from New York (JFK airport)  — to London Heathrow — to Sofia Bulgaria.  Usually that is a relatively uneventful flight with one connection which was supposed to be a relatively comfortable 1hr 50 minute layover…..Little that we knew.  We arrived at JFK (on another flight) 3 hours before the flight to London.  We had plenty of time so I decided that we can spend a good portion of the time in the Admiral’s Club.  At the appropriate time (35 minutes before the 6:10 pm flight) we showed up at the gate to find that the aircraft was being serviced, then the “service” became repair —> and soon enough we were told that the aircraft was not operational until repaired.  Of course we immediately started seeing a BIG issue looming — we were about to miss our connecting flight from London to Sofia.

The big deal about that is the fact that there is only ONE (direct) flight from London to Sofia per day (early morning one).  So I rushed to the Admiral’s club to see what our options are.  After checking with the helpful agents there we determined that we are essentially not in luck.  No way to switch to another flight as American Airlines will not pull our luggage from the aircraft as it was already loaded on our flight.

There were 3 other flights leaving from JFK to London between 6:10 and 9:20, but we were not going to get on either one of them — for one reason only — the check in luggage can not be taken off the plane we were supposed to be on.

So we had to look into all sort of options but unless our flight was cancelled and luggage unloaded we were not supposed to do anything but WAIT.    Very frustrating…The other flights had open seats and we could have even made our connecting flight have we been able to get our luggage and get on the 6:30pm flight…. I do not understand why the luggage rules are so inflexible!

Now, we had to wait till 10:30pm and finally boarded around 11:00 pm and the plane took off at 11:30 pm — 5+ hours late.  So we missed the connecting flight, were able to get our self on a Lufthansa flight and will let you know what the next ordeals were —- can you spell “missing luggage”….?  More to follow…