The email from my busy venture-capital-partner client came as usual from her Blackberry; probably from the back seat of the taxi.
“Just cfming my flight to Boston is on United.”
Well, not exactly.
After a long series of back and forth emails earlier this week, she had decided it was worth a $200 difference to take the JetBlue flight from JFK to Boston, rather than the shuttle operated by US Airways (code-sharing with United) from LaGuardia.
So I emailed back “NO, in caps, it’s JetBlue as we decided to save money and its flight leaves out of JFK.”
She sent a short “Thks” email and directed the cabbie to the right terminal. No harm done.
Stories like this, however, are increasingly a lot more common. Another regular client, an elite-staus doctor, got to San Francisco Airport last week, remembered that the flight he took about once a month to Ontario, California left at 10:45 a.m., so he stopped to get a bite to eat. Except, that the flight left at 10:28 a.m., and when he went to the gate, the plane door was closed.
In this case, we ended up getting him on a flight to Los Angeles and he drove to his meeting. He confessed, “I actually remember seeing when you sent the receipt that the time had changed, but I just didn’t look at my itinerary that morning and I was used to the flight being later.”
There’s a book’s worth of other stories — the travelers who looked at the wrong year’s calendar, the people who forget that THIS time they chose San Jose instead of SFO, or BWI instead of IAD, etc. etc. Flights leaving just after midnight can also be a problem for showing up on the wrong date.
It can happen with an agency or online booking. A friend once told me a story (name changed to protect the guilty) of booking a ticket under the name Grant Michael, when his name was Michael Grant. He barely made the plane.
In our office, most bookings have an email trail, so we are able to see, after the fact, exactly what we sent the client.
But here’s the simple step every traveler should take.
A day before your flight or at least before you go to the airport, READ your itinerary. It will just take a minute. And if you think you don’t have time, then you certainly don’t have time to deal with the potential mess caused by missing a flight.
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
No offense, but your clients are morons, I travel almost weekly from the NYC area out of all 3 major airports, not once in all the years have I ended up at the wrong airport, missed a flight due to snacking, or booked a ticket in the wrong name.
I find it very interesting that your clients aren’t using any number of tools that are available to populate their calendar with their flight information or better yet, tools like Tripit, which not only shows flights, cars and hotels, but can have dining, shows and the like added to the itinerary. In addition, it can send updates and alerts.
“I actually remember seeing when you sent the receipt that the time had changed, but I just didn’t look at my itinerary that morning and I was used to be flight being later.”
You’re all making assumptions here – perhaps he didn’t look at his itinerary on his Blackberry that morning? Perhaps he didn’t check his Outlook calendar? You don’t know – or perhaps you didn’t actually read this part of the post? I mean, come on people. Stuff like this happens all the time.
The situations described here aren’t a matter of realizing one is confused and needing to check, but ones where the traveler thinks he is not confused and chooses not to check. It’s a healthy reminder that even when you think you’re sure, double check in time to solve the problem, if there is one. It happens pretty often.
Anyone who thinks these travelers are morons have never been on the agent’s side of the booking. It happens ALL the time. To ALL of us. Edward Teller, who lived 10 miles from LLL, drove all the way to Lake Tahoe before he realized he missed his turnoff. (I was there when it happened.) People get distracted.
That doesn’t excuse not checking details. Great reminder to look “one last time” before setting out.
We fly from UK to our holiday home in Spain at least twice a year. Normally to Alicante airport. However because of flight prices we flew on one occasion to Valencia (never again airport is a dump) which is equidistant to our home. Guess who booked the normal rental car from Alicante – me. Luckily as we rent from a National Rental company rather than a super cheap company they took pity and honoured the rental even from the wrong airport, though we did accept any car they had.
I’ve been a big fan of the Tripit service, and it gets better all the time.