My Flight to LA was Cancelled
Qunar
I booked my flight from PVG to LAX on Qunar and it was scheduled to departure in the evening on Oct. 17. 2016.
The airline is United Airlines. I went to their official website and booked the seats. Everything was perfect.
In the morning of Oct. 17, about 9 oclock in the morning, I got a call from a Qunar customer service representative, telling me my flight UA199 was cancelled, without knowing the reason as he claimed.
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This guy does not sound like a professional customer service representative, and he spoke in a very strong accent which is quite rare in decent companies.
Because there were so many scamming stories about air tickets and poor experiences on online OTAs, I decided to verify this with the airline.
The flight status of UA199 was shown cancelled on United Airlines official website united.com, what to do next? No one tells me what to do.
The funny thing is, UA199 tickets could still be bought in several online travel agencies. And this lasted till its scheduled departure time.
I called the Qunar representative and they tell me they will handle it and come to me ASAP. ASAP sounds quite silly in this situation.
I did not even finish my packing for the travel, and all the appointments had been arranged in the States.
There was no response within 30 mins, so I called them again to another agent. repeating my story again, and again. And the response was still very slow.
Actually they came back to me later after I called UA, and it was funny that Qunar told me that they can not solve it and I should call UA to change my flight.
20 days later, I got the refund for the ticket from Qunar. This is really not good.
United Airlines
The customer service representative is a lady with a sweet voice, in Cantonese accent, but good mandarin.
She was quite polite and professional, making an apology and help me check the possible flight I can change to.
The problem is that there are not many choices, they can not change to other airliners like America Airlines or Delta but only their own, which means I should put off my schedule to fly the next day or take a longer tranfer flight, either way I would miss one day.
I prefer checking other airliners for the same day flights.
United Airlines promised to provide full refund if I decide to buy tickets from else where, but there will be no extra remedy, which sounds not reasonable and I really didn't have time to argue on this.
New Flight, Not 787, No Free Seat
I didn't want to buy tickets from Qunar anymore,
But, new problems came too 🙂
America Airlines
There is an earlier flight for me to book on AA.
I tried many times, but the website was just loading and loading.
I tried to load it on mobile phone, it was the same.
Forget it!
I checked the site today when I am writing this blog, the site is working.
Delta Airlines
It seems like a lesson for me to learn how to use the websites of all US airlines.
Now I was on the website of Delta Airlines.
Everything seemed fine, and it supports Chinese, too.
But (Again!), I could not finish the registration after at least 10 times trials, and I could not figure out the reason why.
They system told me either wrong address, or wrong phone number, or something else, just can not continue to the next step.
Who will use this website? I changed my strategy and set the website language to be English.
Tadaa, It worked
It just took me 20 seconds to complete the registration. I just could not imagine who did the Chinese website localization for them and who had successfully registered in the Chinese interface.
I bought tickets, but I have to pay extra for the seats so Leo and I can sit together.
Now we could follow my previous schedule, the departure time was slightly earlier than UA199.
Insurance Company
I bought the travel insurance from Starr Insurance. The policy covers a lot of things including delays and cancellations, but not the situation like mine.
Flying over the Pacific Ocean
The best flying experience for me is that I can keep my mobile phone on all the time.
It is interesting to feel the diversities in the international flights.
Most flight attendants here at Delta are aunties and grandmas, which is quite different than in other airliners in Asian countries.
The planes flew really fast and it took only a little bit more than 9 hours to arrive at LAX.
Domestic flights in US
SouthWest
We flew twice with Southwest during this travel.
Southwest is so popular in the States and taking its flight seems really like taking a bus in the air.
I was quite surprised by its open seat policy and a late check-in means you would not have much choice in finding a good seat.
It is easy to find some movies, dramas or live TV and you can watch just on your phone.
From Los Angeles to El Paso
Several American uncles are working as flight attendents.
They always simile, telling jokes all the time, making the short fly full of fun.
It seems there were only two asian faces in this flight.
One uncle asked me for a favor to help switch the language setting from Chinese to English for the new ipad the company gave him, it had been a week and he could not find someone to fix this.
I found it actually was Japanese but I managed to do it. When I told him it was Japanese, the uncle was really surprised how I can solve the problem.
Flying above the desert, we can see clearly what it is in the ground. Route No. 10 is there, We'd spent quite a long time on it in the next few days.
From Atlanta to New York
The best time for this journey is that I have got the best view of Philadelphia and New York City from above the sky. I have a bird's view on the whole Manhatton, it is so real and so close. I can even the statue of Liberty.
Fly Over Canada, Russia
China Southern Airlines: Boston to Shanghai
It felt like being back China when you passed the hatch door.
It is a Chinese Arline and almost all of the passengers are Chinese.
The whole return journey was in the night, and took 15 hours, much longer than the flight we came to the States.
We don't have WIFI, and I can not use my mobile phone.
There are not much choice in the movies. However, many people like them since there are Chinese subtitles.
Jet Leg
I felt nothing when I came to the US after the long distance fly.
But it was totally a different experience to be back.
I got up at around 3 or 4 oclock every morning in the first week.
Great story. Thanks. I know the feeling when your flight gets cancelled. It happened to me once while traveling on Delta from Detroit to Beijing. It was supposed to leave at like 1pm. They kept saying it would be delayed and pushing the departure time later and later. Then, finally, they cancelled it. They said they could not find a pilot to fly the plane. Maybe the pilot got sick. Delta paid for a nearby hotel and a shuttle ride. We flew out the next morning at 7am. They did give us a bunch of Skymiles as compensation.
Thanks for sharing your story, Richard, and it really brought troubles and uncertainties, esp. when you have busy schedules ahead.
For my story, they did not say sorry and there is no compensation.
But we managed to leave the same day and everything in the following travel went really well.