A typhoon really can put a crimp in your flight plans…
We were out souvenir and gift shopping on Sunday when we got a WeChat message from Bangjie about 1:30 that our flight out of Dalian to Shanghai had been cancelled. We checked Delta, and they still showed it was fine, so we weren’t sure, but figured Bangjie was probably right. We ended our shopping trip and headed for the hotel to see what we could do about it. On the way, Pam got an email from Delta confirming the news.
We called Delta using Skype via WiFi, and got a very nice representative who really tried to help us, after sitting on hold for at least half an hour. The problem with a typhoon is it makes a huge dent in the air travel system, so calling a US call center at 2 AM EDT didn’t work quite as well as i thought it would, because thousands of other people were doing the same.
Turns out internet calling is great, and it is free-ish, until the WiFi signal drops and the call ends before you managed to get the problem resolved. This happened many times over the next SEVEN hours as we tried to rearrange our flights, and got really frustrating.
But… imagine trying to change your flights from China after a major weather problem 10 or more years ago. Your choices might be making a hugely expensive international call from your cell phone if you had one, or the hotel phone. Another choice would have been to go to the airport and try to get it fixed at the ticket counter, along with thousands of other stranded travelers. Hmmm…
In addition to being able to use a phone (with an admittedly spotty connection) we also had the internet to look for alternate flights, look up airline telephone numbers, and be in constant contact with Bangjie via WeChat. Modern technology is amazing, and we don’t always appreciate how much has changed in a very short period of time.
We did this several times and finally got a Delta representative that was able to rebook us in the time the connection stayed stable. However, she could not reissue our tickets because China Eastern, the airline we were originally supposed to fly on, had not released our checked in status, even though the flight was cancelled. She transferred us to international ticket reissues, but that call got dropped before we could accomplish anything. We did that a few more times without success.
Anyway, we got the bright idea of calling Delta in China about the same time Bangjie suggested it, and it worked, sort of. The advantage of calling Delta China was we could use the phone part of the cell phone to make the call, rather than relying on WiFi. We got through quickly, got a representative that spoke English, and found out that the China Eastern problem was the holdup, and that they could not fix it.
We finally got around to doing what we (belatedely figured out) should have done in the first place – we called Egencia, the agent that had booked our travel. The first representative we spoke with was sympathetic, but said there was nothing she could do, as we had gone directly to Delta to rebook the flights. We threw ourselves on the mercy of the second representative at Egencia we spoke with, and she did eventually take care of the problem with China Eastern, and called us back to let us know that it was straightented out..
Phew, that was a long day…
Dalian 2019 