Posts Tagged ‘airlines’
The End of a Saga
It girdled two years: from January 2020 to the other day.
The plot was pegged to an Air Canada Phoenix – Toronto round-trip business-class ticket.
After receiving flight confirmation that January and looking forward to what I deemed would be a final fare-thee-well visit to family, relatives and friends around my brother’s July birthday, Air Canada began suspending flights in March and things still haven’t returned to normal for cross-border travel.
The airlines’ first response was to offer ticket holders vouchers valid for two years. I filed a claim like everyone else but had little hope I would get to use it. Then, after Air Canada applied for financial assistance from the Canadian government, the assistance was provided with a condition the Air Canada give its stranded ticket holders refunds if they wished instead of vouchers. I filed for a refund.
A simple phone call was all it took to recoup my travel insurance charge.
Early last year, I received an email with a case number telling me how much Air Canada was going to deposit in the account of the credit card I used to purchase my ticket. I was instructed to check on the status of my case/claim at an online address that I couldn’t get into and called Air Canada reservations a couple of times before being told during a phone call last summer that I was still in the system but there was no information on when my claim would be dealt with.
Suddenly last Wednesday an email popped up telling me my refund had been processed and would be sitting in my credit card account sometime within the next two months. If it didn’t show up on my credit card statement within that time, I was to call the credit-card company and give them the purchase date and ticket number to check and make good on the refund.
I was set to sit out another series of emails and phone calls when MAGICALLY is showed up Sunday on my credit card account, which I check regularly on line.
It set up a feeling that maybe I should look at resurrecting plans for that trip to celebrate my brother’s birthday and attend the relatives’ annual picnic in a nearby city but coronavirus rules and regulations are still in place. When I did a cursory check, I discovered that settling for a voucher would not have been a good idea because the lowest price for that same ticket is almost $600 more.
Canceled flights and crammed cabins …
… prove that the skies may be friendly
but airline companies sure as heck aren’t
Getting Trapped in an Elevator . . .
. . . is pretty low on the list of things most people would like to do. It’s high on the list of nightmares for anyone with phobias related to loss of control and tight places.
But that’s what happened to 10 people in a Minneapolis hotel this past week. The crunch lasted a bit more than an hour when their rising elevator stopped, plummeted a few feet, and braked to a stop between the second and third floors. And the doors would not open. Maintenance workers were unable to improve matters so the fire department was called. They lowered a ladder from the hotel roof down the elevator shaft and the sweating hotel guests clambered out to take the stairs down to their respective floors.
As the climbed out, the last of the locked-in said they had left their luggage. Most just shrugged and said they’d get it later. So the gent still in the cage – an American Airlines co-pilot still in uniform — hauled the bags up and out for them. It could be considered a mixture of personal courtesy and professional customer service. Knowing the flyer, we’d say it’s a bit of both. You see, he’s our son-in-law.
Mature Life Features 