airline lost our child's car seat

The kicker on our trip home from Seattle last night was the fact that two of our three pieces made it to SFO with us, just fine.

The missing (crucial) piece of luggage that didn't show up was the car seat for our youngest. I'd been keeping an eye on the odd-size luggage window which is where the car seats are usually delivered, but no luck there. So, after watching the both the odd-size window open and close and the luggage carousel spin for 45 minutes AFTER we'd taken our first two bags off, it was clear no more pieces were coming through. Finally, it was time to make the fateful trip to the baggage claim agents to inquire what was up.

I was able to narrow down which of the bar code claim tickets belonged to the car seat and handed it over to the agent asking for an update on the status of my kid's checked car seat.

"Oh, this didn't even scan," said the agent, looking back and forth between the ticket and her computer screen.

Translation: it didn't even make it INTO the system at SeaTac, so no way it was going to arrive at SFO that night. She apologized for the inconvenience while handing me a form and a pen.

While I was filling out the United Airlines Delayed Baggage Report form, the agent disappeared into a side office.

Then the amazing thing happened: she re-emerged with a brand new Even-Flo car seat for us to use until United was able to find our missing car seat and deliver it to us. We'd simply hand over the loaner when our own was delivered.

Call me a cynic, but I'd fully expected a shoulder shrug and apology, not a replacement seat. So, what could have been a really bad experience turned out to be a redemptive customer service exchange. Nice touch.

Oh, and her final tip for me: don't bother calling the 800-number on the back of the Delayed Baggage Report... call the United Premier Exec dedicated customer support line instead.

the fast security lane at SFO

the family is flying to Seattle this morning, and since I saw how busy things were coming back into SFO from Boston last Saturday morning, I knew security would be a looooong wait.

We (me, the wife and two small girls) got to the security line a good 90 minutes before boarding. When we got to the TSA agent to present our IDs, she asked how many of us were together (four) and then she whisked us around the long lines and to a special lane with hardly any wait.

I thought we were going to be subjected to the new puffer technology (where you step inside an enclosed machine and it shoots puffs of air at you from head to toe), but no. What did all the people in this lane have in common? we all were traveling with small children.

Brilliant.

Take those obviously prone to gum up the security screening procedures and give them their special lane. Keeps the other lanes moving quickly, and enables the comraderie and patience of new parents to help each other out.

I even saw them letting the wheelchair bound thru the same lane as us.

A gold star to whomever thought this crowd control measure up.

Maybe I'll borrow a kid next time I need to fly.

how to reproduce 36k ft thinking at sea level?

Today is not the first time I've had some holy-smokes! strategic insight blind-side me mid-flight.

I'm just about to pass over my 50,000th mile flying in the last three months, and besides the toll of the cramped seating arrangement and the challenge of liquids (both to consume and to expend), the cocoon of air travel actually presents me a very fertile space for big-picture thinking.

I divided up this flight into three segments (all segments soundtracked with noise-canceling Shure e4c headphones and a random playlists on my iPod).

• In the first segment, I caught up on all the short articles I'd been printing out and stashing in my "flight folder" (Tom Friedman opinions, CIO mag leadership articles, conference prep materials)
• [break for food and drink]
• in the second segment, I dove into the book I'm plowing through right now (The Difference by Scott E. Page)
• [break for short nap]
• in the final segment, I read all my RSS feeds offline to get inspired by a whole plethora of different perspectives, and that's when the insights hit.

The ideas flow like water, and I madly dash the notes down in an email to myself. And here I sit wondering what is it about hurtling through space that enables this kind of thinking.

Much as I don't want to admit it, I think the catalyst is the one-two-three punch:

• my cocoon of iPod-laced sound
• the lack of distractions from others around me asking questions
  
• and, gulp, the complete lack of internet connectivity.
  

Without connectivity, there's no way for me to satisfy my curiosities by following the links in my RSS reader, so I gobble up the static ideas and perspectives quickly... and that leads the neurons to fire in ways they otherwise don't.

Next time I'm inclined to spend sleepless hours in the middle of the night surfing the web (yes, undisturbed, but no music playing), I'll instead try to reproduce the airplane experience: pop on the iPod, sign off the web and then see if I can get into an uncomfortable seating position.

Bonus points if I can endure the awkward tug of both a full bladder and a dry tongue for full replication of the high-level thinking environment that seems abundant at 36,000 feet.

united flies better than usairways

I had to be in Canton, Ohio this morning no later than 8:30am. Seeing how I live in the Bay Area, a plane ride was called for.

To minimize the time away from family, I opted to take a red-eye from SFO to Pittsburgh on a United codeshare flight operated by USAirways and then drive a rental car to Canton (80 miles away).

It's been a long time since I've flown any airline domestically other than United. I've got almost 500,000 FF miles on United, so you know my loyalties.

It only occurred to me last night as I was arriving to SFO: I've never flown any airline BUT United out of SFO (except my international trip on KLM last month). So I've never experienced Terminal One at SFO before. I may never stray from Terminal Three again.

I was a little underwhelmed by the entire Terminal One and US Airways flight experience. Granted, SFO is a hub for United, so things are generally better all around for flying United in and out of SFO, but I didn't expect the drop off to be so steep:

• The check-in process for USAirways consisted of eight electronic kiosks (three of them were open for folks not checking bags), period. No way to approach a ticketing agent directly. You have to interact with the kiosk first.
• The TSA pre-screening tables are configured oddly in Terminal One so that the amount of table space available to stack your stuff in the bins is quite short, and the unload area is quite cramped. Lots of elbowing and hip checking once through the metal detector to get your shoes on and laptop stowed before taking the lo-o-o-ong walk down the terminal to the gate.
• No gate attendants! Wow. If you've got a seating request, I guess you're SOL. Maybe this was due to the late departure of the flight (10:30p), but I was very surprised not to see any USAirways staff until mere moments before the gate opened to usher us in.
• This was my first trip on an Airbus A319 in a long time. Small plane (but not an empty seat to be found). The flight attendants were a little on the bossy side for my tastes, but for the most part, my eyes were shut and ears were plugged to sleep as much of the 4.5 hour flight time as possible.

Oh, and am I the only one who's noticed that Pittsburgh has added terminals to its shopping mall where the airport used to be? Do folks really go to the airport to buy all that stuff? I felt like I was walking through a miniature (only 40 stores) version of the local Valley Fair mall once I got to the main hub of the airport. Reminded me a little of my last trip thru BWI (another mall-turned-airport outside Baltimore).

Oh, and in case anyone in California cares: it's definitely not spring yet along the Western PA, Northern WV, Eastern OH corridor. The buds on the trees haven't yet opened, and it was flurrying as I drove to Canton this morning.

Glad I'm flying United back to SFO tomorrow. How'd I get so comfortable in my flying rut? Oh yeah, by flying 28,000 miles on United so far this year. eesh

lessons on surviving winter travel to boston - redux

A week ago, I was in Essex, MA (just outside Boston) looking out at six inches of fresh snow topped off by a little ice and sleet feeling grateful I hadn't paid attention to Lesson Number One from my nine lessons.

Instead of being booked on the first flight out, as Lesson Number One had taught me, I was on the penultimate flight out. And if not for that, I'd have been desperately trying to live lessons Three through Nine all over again, just two weeks after I'd learned them the first time.

Thanks to the winter storm that hit the Eastern Seaboard on March 16 and 17, United canceled its evening flights on the 16th and many of the morning flights on the 17th.

My St. Pat's flight was untouched, and thanks to my Mileage Plus Premier Exec status, my upgrade request was honored well before the cancellations threw bookings into a tizz and filled the flight to overflowing. Sitting in First Class never felt so good.

Perhaps my upcoming trip to Boston (third trip in six weeks) will yield more travel lessons. I just hope there's no snow involved this time. I'm in the mood for spring having sprung.

flying (to the) dutch, man

After a harried morning at work, I arrived at SFO with time to spare to take KLM flight 606 to Amsterdam. It's a code share flight with Northwest Airlines, and I had signed up for flight status notification at the Northwest web site. Having used United's EasyUpdate service for many years, I thought NWA's service would be similar.

Wrong.

Two hours before the flight was due to leave (and I was already in queue to go through security), I got the following email in my box from nwa@nwa.com:

Flight information is not available for NW flight 8606 scheduled to depart at 3:20 pm on March 6 and arrive in AMS at 10:55 am.

Luckily, the flight information notice, or lack thereof, was the low point of my experience flying KLM to Amsterdam. Flight 606 is a ten-hour nonstop flight aboard a McDonell Douglas MD-11. Depending on which flyer forum you visit, the MD-11 is either the last of a graceful line of three-engine long range aircraft, or it's a dying breed that should be parked in the deserts of Arizona without further delay.

Aside from lacking power ports at any seat on the aircraft, I found the aircraft to be rather comfortably appointed and unless I was looking really really close, I couldn't tell the aircraft hadn't been delivered in just the last couple years (in reality, the last MD-11 was delivered to KLM in 1997).

I'd been assigned seat 6G, an aisle seat, in the World Business Class section, and this sums up the experience:

• the seat has 150 degree tilt, so is much more comfortable than coach, but in no way a comfortable position for sleeping
  
• it has its own video monitor, so you're able to choose among 7 movies and 7 television program packages that run on a 2 hour loop
  
• you can learn a surprising amount of useful Dutch by reading the captions to a spoken-english movie
  
• shortly after boarding, you're given a convenience bag (with eye blocker, cabin socks, etc), noise-canceling headphones and breakfast menu to make your selections for the next "morning"
  
• within the first two hours of flight, dinner is served, cleared and the shades are down and lights lowered to facilitate sleeping (or learning Dutch-by-caption for those of us who are restless)
  
• the food was decent fare and the coffee and wine were actually quite good
  
• the attending crew are polite and efficient at their tasks
  
• the parting "gift" for the business class folks is a miniature model of Old Dutch Houses filled with "the famous Dutch young jenever, distilled by Bols Distilleries." Nice gift for me (at the hotel) and the girls (emptied for home)
  

In all, quite the pleasant transatlantic experience and I wouldn't hesitate to fly them again (after I return home Sunday, natch)

My Schiphol airport experience can be summed up in one word so far: smoky. What a difference from the clean-air US airports.

nine lessons on surviving winter travel to boston

This weekend was a real lesson for me regarding air travel in the wintertime and how I might do better in my next booking. At least, as long as I'm flying United Airlines, my carrier of choice.

I was supposed to arrive back to San Francisco on Sunday at 2:30pm on a direct flight from Boston. Instead, I arrived a few hours ago, at 2:30pm Monday on a delayed connecting flight from Boston by way of LAX. Yes, I was 24 hours late, but I'm a lot wiser for it. Here's what I learned:

Lesson One: Book the earliest nonstop flight you can
Instead of taking flight 171 (6:25a) or even flight 173 (8:00a) nonstop flight from Boston to SFO, I chose flight 177, the 11:04a departure which left ample room for "weather-relatd equipment problems" to delay my getting out of Boston's Logan airport even though the sky was clear and sunny in Boston.

Lesson Two: Subscribe to United's EasyUpdate flight notification system
I've signed up to receive text messages to my phone with any/all updates on delays and gate changes and upgrades! :-) and United seems to get these text messages out even before updating the web-based Flight Status tool. Starting at 6:09a on Sunday, I started getting updates that my flight departure was delayed which allowed me to hang out at the hotel longer instead of getting the bad news upon arrival at the airport.

Lesson Three: When the electronic check-in kiosk asks if you'd like to change flights, think long and hard before saying no.
When I arrived at Logan airport and used the kiosk to check in, knowing I was still two hours early for my flight that'd been delayed three hours already, I thought it a little odd when the machine asked if I wanted to change flights. Silly me, I put faith in "the system" that flight 177 would make it out of Boston some time that day. Those who chose to reschedule likely made it out on a later "regularly scheduled flight" while I got bumped to the next day.

Lesson Four: When the gate agent starts sharing how he's horse-trading to get equipment assigned to your flight, it's time to rebook.
Once the agent informed us the original equipment never made it out of Chicago (snow) and the replacement plane was stuck in Dulles (snow and sleet) so a third plane due in from LA was to be ours, resulting in a now 5:45pm departure, I should have taken it as a sign to rebook. Our agent was Mr. Merry Sunshine at 5pm as his shift ended and he strolled through the terminal at the end of a long day. The new crew coming in waited until 5:30pm, as we passengers were queued up to start boarding to cancel the flight because the crew was now "illegal" (had worked too many hours to staff our flight cross-country).

Lesson Five: The moment you see the flight is canceled, RUN, don't walk, to the ticket counter by the curb.
Sure, there's a customer service desk or two inside the terminal (once you've passed through security), but your odds of getting to an agent are much better if you just go back out to the agents by the curb and queue up. I got funny looks from all the folks queued up to deal with the inside-the-terminal-yet-very-haggard-looking agent. When they joined me out by the curb, I got a bunch of "lucky bastard" head nods as they went to the waaay back of the queue having been booted out to where I was.

Lesson Six: If you're in line at the ticket counter, don't bother to call the airline hoping to jump the line.
Every single person around me that was able (after multiple tries) to get a customer service agent on the phone was told the exact same thing: stay in line, the agent in the same physical space as you will be able to help you better. Makes sense if you think about it: with a big weather event, you've got lots of people in lots of airports flooding the phone-based customer service resources.

Lesson Seven: Chill.
Adopt a Zen attitude about the whole situation, no matter how nasty it's been to your plans, and do not jump aboard the "you don't know the day I've had" bitch bus. I do know how your day has been. I've been watching you complain to everyone sitting around you and a series of someones on your cell phone all day long. Take it quietly and respectfully like a man (or woman). No matter how much you want to believe the airline had it in for you from the start, I'll bet they were doing everything they could to get you home and only gave up when the last reasonable possibility was exhausted.

Lesson Eight: Be nice to the airline agents.
You know everyone else has been extracting pounds of flesh from them all day long as we've been stuck in the terminal with each other. Be the compassionate one.

The exact words of a purple-faced guy at the ticket counter next to me. "I've been stuck in this airport all day and I want to get home NOW! You better get ME home now! I want on the next flight out of here or so help me..." My agent and I exchanged a shocked look, and this is what I said to her "I can only begin to imagine the day you've had. Can you help me get to San Francisco?" As suspected, there was nothing available leaving that night, but she put me on the next flight not routing through a snowy section of the country (thru LAX) and on which she could confirm seats and she even tossed in a complimentary upgrade. Which leads me to the final lesson:

Lesson Nine: A seat in hand is better than two standbys.
No matter how tempting it is to try to get on a flight that'll arrive 30 minutes earlier than the one you've got a confirmed seat on, don't do it. I almost let a fellow traveler convince me to wait for the 8am nonstop flight out of Boston that was scheduled to land two hours before my two-leg trip through LAX. Thankfully I did not. I kept my aisle seats in Economy Plus as I watched all the snow coming down in Boston and covering up everything. Given how much time it took as my on-time departure plane was deiced on the tarmac, I wasn't too surprised when the several-hour-delayed Boston folks arrived at SFO the same time I made it from LAX.

Fingers crossed there are no weather impacts when I get back on a plane next Tuesday to Stockholm.

is 9C really the best seat on your flight?

When booking a flight I'm not one to leave airplane seat selection to chance. Maybe it's the long legs. Or the overwhelming urge to actually be able to see my laptop's screen while working in that sleek cubicle in the sky.

I've found a cool little site where you can find the best seats on an upcoming flight by using the Seat Scorecard.

The site promises that "[their] airplane comfort guides consider factors such as seat width, seat pitch, seat plan, seat configuration, and legroom to determine overall seating comfort. [They] have reviewed the seat maps / seating charts of all featured plans and also consider feedback of frequent travelers on major American and International airlines."

After poking around looking at airplanes I spent most of my 50k miles flying on last year, it seems their reviews are pretty darn accurate.

giving away united premiere status

Thanks to my having flown over 40k miles on United this year, I've been given the privilege of bestowing United Premiere Associate status on someone.

Here's what being a Premiere Associate will get you:

• Access to United Economy Plus - Stretch out with up to five extra inches of legroom in the special seating section in the front of economy. Available on a first-come-first-serve basis at the time of booking
• Dedicated call center lines - Provides single-source convenience and enhanced customer support
• Premium check-in - Access to airport Premier check-in lines
• Priority waitlist - Higher priority than general members for waitlist clearance (e.g. upgrades, access to Mileage Plus membership benefits)
• Priority security - Ensures speed and convenience by providing access to elite-level security lines (where available and permitted by local airport authorities)
• Priority standby - Gives priority above general members for same-day standby travel
• Priority boarding - Permits boarding in Seating Area 1, allowing you to board earlier and have access to overhead bin space and extra time to settle in pre-departure to relax
• Alliance Silver - Allows access to priority waitlist and priority standby benefits across the Star Alliance network
• Upgrades at Elite Level Pricing - purchase upgrades at a discount elite price
• Earn more miles with the Mileage Plus Visa - Premier Associate members have no limit to the miles they can earn with the Mileage Plus Visa
• Preferred upgrade clearance on 500 Mile Upgrades - Upgrades are confirmed 36 hours before departure, based on availability
• Non air awards - Redeem miles for car rentals and hotel stays. For more information visit www.united.com/carawards and www.united.com/hotelawards
• Unlimited Confirmed Y/B Upgrades* - With the purchase of a full-fare Economy-class ticket (on select Y/B fares*), elite members, plus one companion traveling on the same reservation, can upgrade one class of service for travel within United States, Canada, Hawaii, Caribbean, Mexico and Central America free of charge, using no miles. Subject to availability and specific fare codes. Not valid on Government fares.

If you, or someone you know, would like this perk, just drop me a line at hvytkblog@gmail.com

First come, first served.

:UPDATE: and the offer has been taken. Thanks for all who pinged me. Will let you know if the opportunity arises again.