Trying to get home

[smdubowsky]

I'm writing this message waiting an extra five hours for my USA 3000 flight from Fort Lauderdale to Newark, NJ. They have free wi-fi.

 

That in itself would not be worthy of comment except that we started the journey home three days ago in San Juan when we disembarked from the Constellation on the 11th.

 

After a tumultuous day in the San Juan airport, we did manage to get out of San Juan. American Airlines flew us out to Fort Lauderdale. The luggage is another story. We still are not sure where it is since we had already checked in when they cancelled our flight on Saturday. We would have stayed on in San Juan but all of the hotel rooms were already booked!

 

Beware of American Airlines agents in San Juan. They gave me many conflicting stories. According to the information I was given the luggage is either in San Juan, JFK, or Newark. Take your pick. I guess I'll worry about us when we get home. We are a litttle battle weary right now.

 

Luckily I had baggage insurance and was able to but a change of clothes in Florida, but try finding an outercoat in Southern Florida!

 

Hopefully we will be home by around 4AM on Tuesday; just 56 hours late.

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

In any case, thanks for the vent.

[cusyl]

Don't envy you at all, perhaps you could buy a few layers of sweat shirts to keep you from freezing when you arrive back home.

I've been wondering how people were managing that couldn't get home because of the blizzard.

Can't imagine living in weather like that. Hopefully you have found a hotel in Florida to get some sleep,.

[judyfssw]

I'm so sorry that you've had to endure all those problems getting home. It sort of puts a damper on a good vacation -- it was a good cruise, wasn't it?

[canderson]

And of course, they (the airlines + TSA) will, when it suits them, hold a departure and pull an aircraft back to unload a couple of bags if a passenger is late to the gate or misses a connection but his bags don't, because of course, it's essential that all passengers ALWAYS travel with their own bags, right? Besides breaking this rule daily themselves with 'send aheads' (your bag goes out on a flight ahead of yours), it's not like any of the nutcases looking to make trouble are going to care if they're on the same plane with their exploding suitcases. In the beginning, I'd really thought a tiny bit of good could come out of this in that all of this new security would force a better control of getting bags to the right places. Guess that was hoping for too much.

 

Ah well. If your bags weren't still in SJU, they probably got the 'send-ahead' treatment without you. That's really annoying when they cancel your flight and you don't even have clean underwear. Sorry it happened to you at the end of a cruise.

 

If there were any flights out of SJU to the NY area before yours, there's a fair chance your luggage will be waiting for you when you finally get to the right airport. It's probably been sitting there since the day you disembarked. In any case, wherever you were actually headed last, that's almost certain to be where your bags either are or will appear.

 

By rights, it's been in lockup waiting for you at whichever airport American was trying to get you to when they took your luggage at the counter in FLL (that could be either LGA or EWR - they service both, and could have routed you and your bags to EWR through either Dallas or Chicago), and you'll need to go to their office in the luggage area to get it released to you.

[TEXASMUNK]

The last airline you are on is responsible for your luggage!

 

Yes, you started with AA but final responsibility is with the last carrier.

 

But also check with AA, they will scan your tags and BEMUS will track your luggage.

 

NO, the AA personnel in San Juan were not lying to you. They check the system and the system shows the potential baggage routing. The dynamics of a snowstrom alters things minute by minute so routings can change just as frequently

[Druke I]

Ah, the joys of travel.

 

We've been pre-warned about our luggage when we fly to Buenos Aires next month - our TA says LanChile has a less than sterling reputation for sending luggage of same plane as passengers!

 

I do think we will "cross-dress" our luggage, in case one or more bags become separated.

[tadjr]

And of course, they (the airlines + TSA) will, when it suits them, hold a departure and pull an aircraft back to unload a couple of bags if a passenger is late ...

 

Wrong. Positive bag match is only required on International flights. This is where the TSA/airline will delay a flight to remove a bag for someone who has not boarded. All domestic bags have been screened and positive bag match is not required per TSA. The airlines dont like to send you on the plane without your bag or send the bag without you, but it does happen. It either creates excess bags to store at the other end until you get there or it causes them to take a claim when you show up and the bag doesnt.

 

 

In the beginning, I'd really thought a tiny bit of good could come out of this in that all of this new security would force a better control of getting bags to the right places. Guess that was hoping for too much.

 

Unless passengers are going to be willing to pay more for airline tickets, there is no way the airlines will be able to invest in scanning equipment (like FedEx or UPS uses to track packages) for all the cities and flights in the US. On a full flight you can be talking 300-400 bags easily if everyone checks in 2 bags. That is a lot of chances for a bag to go astray. Either missing a flight being TSA screened, being put on a wrong cart, being put on a wrong plane or any other number of things that can happen when humans are in charge.

 

Ah well. If your bags weren't still in SJU, they probably got the 'send-ahead' treatment without you. .....

 

Except there werent that many planes that made it in to ANY New York airport since Sat until probably yesterday. I know most of the flights from TPA were canx after Sat noon and then all day Sun and some carriers were even cancelling on Mon am. The bag will eventually end up at the city it was tagged to (EWR/LGA, etc). File a claim at the last airline you flew on. They are always responsible for getting the bag claim taken and to get the bags to you. Of course, in a situation like this with the possibility of so many bags being delayed, it might be wise to check at the airport on your own to see if the bags have arrived. It will take quite a bit of time to get them all sorted and delivered.

 

This is one reason I always take a clean change of underwear, shirt and anything else you might need for a day or two in a carryon bag. At least it was on the way home. I always hate to do the dirty clothes right away when I get home. ;)

I'm glad you finally made it home. I know in TPA, we had quite a few people yesterday that made it out of SJU on Sun and continued home on Mon. I know of one airline that was telling people it was going to be Thurs before they could get them home!!!

[poetic license]

I feel for you, smdubowsky. When we disembarked from CONSTELLATION in San Juan in November, AA lost our luggage too .... which we discovered when trying to claim it back in Austin 7 hours later. After returning home, we discovered that almost everyone on our CC roll call had missing luggage. Over a period of several days, we all got our bags back, delivered to our homes. Thank God it happened at the end of the cruise and not the beginning! But I find it strange that there seems to be a pattern here, and San Juan is the only common denominator. I have had luggage go missing before, but not all of it, and not for days on end.

 

I think I would think twice about sailing out of and returning to San Juan in the future, since there is no way to avoid the airport and their inept handling.

 

Cheers,

[Hornfrogs]

Was told about twenty years ago to "burn your luggage instead of checking it when you leave San Juan".

Looks like nothing has changed!

[M&M Hayden]

We've cruised in and out of San Juan a number of times and I guess I now consider myself lucky that our luggage has always made it home with us (not so with some other ports).

OUR biggest complaint is the organization of the airport itself. Stand in line for three plus hours just to check in and then go to the gate area where there are no seats so you have to sit on the floor for two.

[canderson]

Wrong. Positive bag match is only required on International flights. This is where the TSA/airline will delay a flight to remove a bag for someone who has not boarded. All domestic bags have been screened and positive bag match is not required per TSA. The airlines dont like to send you on the plane without your bag or send the bag without you, but it does happen. It either creates excess bags to store at the other end until you get there or it causes them to take a claim when you show up and the bag doesnt.

Wrong? Depends upon the flights in question.

 

When checking in for an international flight where an intermediate domestic stop occurs, the bags have (ostensibly) already been screened at the original point of embarkation. However, at the intermediate airport that starts the international leg, if the bags make it between terminals and the passenger doesn't, things get held up even though they've been screened. And since when haven't outbound international bags been screened in any case?

 

Still makes no sense. Of course, both the airlines and travel agents still tend to create itineraries with unrealistic turns that cause this. I actually had United try to book a set of flights for me last year that had a turn that wasn't even 'legal'. I thought this sort of thing was locked out on their system. I politely declined it, and asked for something more reasonable that wouldn't take an Olympic 440 time to make. I've found that bags can be transferred between terminals a lot faster than the people in some airports (e.g., Philadelphia A<->E !!!)

[smdubowsky]

We did get home about 4AM. Then I got up for work at 6:30AM. Got through the day but don't remember much!

 

Our bags are still on the loose. American reported that three of the bags were actually in Fort Lauderdale with us while one was in LaGuardia. We would have looked for the baggage ( we had nothing else to do during the four hour wait.) except that the AA baggage agent told us they were in Newark or maybe JFK. Now the airline says that all of the bags are headed to LaGuardia and then will be delivered to our home tomorrow. We'll have to wait and see.

 

I understand that the situation was very fluid on Saturday in San Juan, but the airline should have all agents on the same page. We lost about 2 hours standing in the wrong lines and going through security twice.

 

BTW, if you ever need to buy an outercoat in southern Florida in February, try Burlington Coat Factory. I had gone to every department store in Palm Beach and Broward Counties before someone suggested Burlington.

 

All in all, this saga did not ruin our wonderful cruise, but it did make it feel like it happened a long time ago.

[flexsmom]

This general problem of not knowing where cargo is isn't limited to luggage! My 22-week old labs were shipped to me from Kentucky a few months ago when they were 8-weeks old - they were to have changed planes in Cinncinnati and then to Reagan National. At 2:30pm when the plane arrived - no dogs. We were told to wait for the next flight. At 5pm - no dogs. They contacted Cinncinnati and were told there were never any dogs on the original flight! Ok - the breeder faxes them the cargo slip with their own company representative signatures on them stating they boarded the plane in Kentucky at 10am. At 6pm a call comes from Bangor, Maine - they found a crate with 2 puppies on one of their planes! They'll be at Reagan at 8:45pm. We go to get them - and you guessed it - no dogs. Oh wait - they shipped them to Dulles instead, 45 minutes away. We finally get them at 11pm at Dulles. Not one of the "systems" was ever factually updated as the airlines relied upon people hand-keying in cargo data AFTER flights leave. My brother is an airline pilot and his primary comment was that if we ever had to ship a body, make sure someone accompanies it because it will get lost if no one is there to ensure it leaves and enters each and every leg of a trip to get to its final desination. UGH!

[smdubowsky]

A final post script to our prolonged travel tale. We finally arrived home at 4:00 AM on the 14th. after working a full day on three hours of sleep, I came home, relaxed, and then went to bed around 11PM. At 3:20AM the phone rang. My wife, of course, thought something had happened to her elderly mother. It turns out it was the delivery service, delivering the luggage! And they didn't even have all of the pieces! I was too tired to be ticked off.

[dhcoaster]

Sorry to hear about your adventures out of San Juan.

When we cruised out of San Juan in 2003 we took Spirit Air out of Atlantic City to San Juan. Had about an hour stop over in FLL both ways and they were perfect flights, luggage and all.