My Flight Planning Went in the Ditch
I’ve been booking my own business travel for years. It almost always goes well but this week, it didn’t. We were going to Dallas to accept an award for WFLS as the Academy of Country Music Small Market Radio Station of the Year. Quite an honor and I was thrilled to get to attend and accept the award.
As I was booking the trip, each airline was higher than the last so I went to Southwest to see what I could find and perhaps get a deal. Well, I got a great deal but I missed one key thing. Keep that in mind, I missed it. BUT when I entered the destination, I put in DFW and I was flying out of Richmond (RIC). A deal popped up from Southwest offering air travel to Dallas AND hotel for less than the others I’d found for just the flight. Since time was getting tight, I took the deal and booked it.
On game day, I flew out to Dallas thinking I was off to DFW but found out I was flying to Love Field in Dallas. One person after another told me, “Southwest doesn’t fly to DFW”. Everyone knew but me. That didn’t show up on the screen when booking. It didn’t say “We don’t fly there” (that I noticed). It just said, here you go. That cost me dearly during my trip because the hotel was miles away from the event so my Lyft rides kept adding up.
No problem. I was still thrilled to be at the ceremony. Flying out Thursday morning, I looked at my ticket and noticed the route was different than the flight TO Dallas. Going there it went RIC-ATL-Love Field in Dallas (Not DFW). Going back it went from Love Field to Chicago Midway and then RIC. Even that would have been OK but we were stuck on the ground due to a nasty storm in Dallas. We left 2 hours late and that made me miss my connection in Chicago to fly to RIC. I had to stay overnight. But when re-booking me the next day, instead of Midway to RIC, they sent me to Atlanta (ATL) then to RIC. What? I’m going backward?
I tried to get on Standby for the 8:30 flight from Chicago Midway to RIC and I was the ONLY person on the Standby list. About 30 minutes before the flight, Southwest started asking people to give up their seats because they were over-sold. There went my standby chances.
I still got back to Richmond and got home with our cool trophy but I will now spend time before my trips looking over every itinerary. I can’t even blame anyone. It’s not Southwest’s fault and I didn’t use a travel agent. My blame pointer seems to work best when I point it at myself anyway.