An Unexpected Layover

We didn't land in Los Angeles until 1:30 AM. We had missed our connecting flight by more than three hours. Air Canada said that they would help us find "solutions" for the travelers that were supposed to get on connecting flights. It turned out that their solutions were lame. Very, very lame. Essentially, they gave us the brush off. They told all of the passengers that they needed to visit the United Airlines service desk first thing in the morning and get themselves put on "standby".

Standby sucks. It means that we would have to show up at the airport and hope that some other passenger didn't show up so that we could claim their seat. If no seats freed up, then we would have to go back to the hotel and try for the next day. Air Canada said it was the only solution since all of the Sydney-bound flights were already overbooked. They also pointed us to a couple hotels that we could stay in overnight. When I told them that they were obligated to pay for our hotel, they got extremely defensive and told us that "there was no argument since the delay was weather related." Bullcrap. They failed to provide a crew for the flight on time. However, by this point, it was 2 AM and we were too exhausted to argue.

The shuttle bus to the hotel took almost an hour to take us there since the driver was on break. We didn't get to sleep until 3 AM.

In my opinion, let's forget that Friday February 1 ever happened. It was one of the worst kind of days. I've never had such a bad experience while trying to fly.

In the morning, I called Patrick McMorris to see if he had any suggestions on how to get us out of LA and in Sydney. Going on standby was not acceptable. PATRICK SAVED THE DAY. HE WAS SO HELPFUL. HE IS A SUPERHERO. THANK YOU SO MUCH PATRICK!

Patrick called the United Airlines ticketing agency and got a ticketing agent to rebook us onto the flight the very next night from our original flight. Even though Air Canada said that the flight was overbooked, United Airlines said that they would get us onto that flight. We didn't even have to go to the airport in the morning to take care of it.

For delivering us four hours late to Los Angeles and giving us the cold shoulder, Air Canada, YOU SUCK.

So we decided to make the most of our unexpected layover day in Los Angeles. The weather was about fifteen degrees and fairly sunny. The springlike weather made us feel happy. My dad and I had never been to LA before. My sister had seen the city some two or three years before. We decided to go on a bus tour of the city.

The tour was pretty good. It last about four or five hours and took us past downtown to Hollywood (including the Chinese Theatre), to the Farmer's Market for lunch, Beverly Hills, through Santa Monica to Venice Beach, and back past Marina Del Rey. Venice Beach was particularly cool. Its the part of town where the odd balls like to go out and strut their stuff. We saw a lot of crazy stuff, including a crackhead jumping up and down on broken glass and a rat riding a cat riding a dog.

Now we're back at the airport waiting for our flight to Sydney. Everything should be good now. We'll get to Sydney only 24 hours late.

--
Rob Szumlakowski
Los Angeles, USA