Catching up
I'm back from Jackson and GAFilk both. I'm mainly going to discuss the trip back from Jackson first though :)
Because of pricing, it was cheaper for me to fly back via Seattle (like, several hundred dollars cheaper). The flight was JAC -> SLC -> SEA -> JFK, with the SEA to JFK leg being a redeye. My plan was to just sleep on that flight and then go to work in the morning. The timing wasn't bad other than the 3-plus hour layover at Salt Lake, but there's a decent wine bar there and plenty of places to eat so I grabbed a meal and a couple of drinks and was at my gate in plenty of time. The connection at Seattle was a comfortable hour and 10 minutes.
Comfortable, that is, except that the plane needed de-icing and sat outside waiting for equipment for long enough for me to watch the first half of the new Ghostbusters film and left an hour after our scheduled departure time. Which meant that I wouldn't even get off the plane before the boarding door was closed on my connecting flight. No real worries at that, because it's free to change flights in those circumstances and you have free access to the Delta site on the plane's wifi. I looked and my flight was delayed and my flight to JFK was showing as "On Time" so I found a flight to JFK that left at 7:40AM the next day (and even scored a business class seat for not too much) and changed my flight (at which point my old flight vanished from my Delta app -- this will be important). When I got off the plane at Seattle, I went up to the gate agent and told him that I'd missed my flight. He immediately offered to rebook me, which I didn't need, but I asked about a hotel voucher. He said yes, and printed out a hotel voucher, a meal voucher, and a copy of my new boarding pass. I thanked him and left to head out to the hotel shuttle. Just as I'm leaving the building I get a text from Delta that my bags have been loaded onto my flight. I'm boggled, since at this point I'm not flying out until the next morning. So while I'm waiting for the hotel shuttle, I pull up the flight tracker and discover that my flight from Seattle has also been delayed. I could have made it. Ah well.
The hotel shuttle was full and just drove past the stop we were waiting at, so I split a cab to get there with a couple who'd been waiting there for longer and had already seen one shuttle drive by. So off to the hotel, where I grabbed a good 5 hours of sleep in a real bed. The hotel restaurant didn't open until 6:30 and I wanted to be on the 6:00 shuttle (never having been to SEA I thought I'd give myself a little extra time). I was through security in plenty of time thanks to Global Entry, which includes TSA Pre-Check. So I grabbed breakfast and boarded my flight. I'd paid for wifi on the plane so that I could work, and since I was sitting in Business Class I basically worked and drank Bloody Marys all the way back to JFK.
The one last thing to do when I got back to New York was to retrieve my luggage. I wandered off to Terminal 4's Delta Baggage Office and explained that while I'd missed my connection in Seattle, my luggage hadn't. The agent told me that he had good news and bad news. The good news was that my suitcase and snowboard had indeed made it to JFK. The bad news was that they were in Terminal 2 and I'd have to get over there. Ugh. (Not horrible but an annoyance).
All told, though, I did OK. I got a fair amount of work done on the flight, had a few drinks, got my stuff and made it home not too late. Which is good, because the very next day I flew out to Georgia for GAFilk!
But that's a tale for another day.
DW comments
This entry was originally posted on my Dreamwidth journal. You may comment there or here.