Bahama Drama Part 1…

Due to the length of this story, I have broken it up into 3 parts…

One thing that’s apparent when I go on trips with my girls is, something has to go wrong. It’s like we can’t have a good time without some form of drama involved. This trip that we took to the Bahamas in 2006 was no different. We all knew that going to the Bahamas would bring about some issues, and believe me, we were not disappointed.

This tale of our Bahamas trip actually begins with another trip…to Las Vegas. Flash back to December 2005, New Year’s weekend. My girls Heavenly*, CoCo*, and I (Sunnie*) got booted off our flight to Vegas because the incompetent losers over at Airtran don’t know how to count and overbooked as a result (there was even more drama involved in this trip, but I’ll have to save that for another post). Much to our chagrin, we lost about 7 hours due to having to take a later flight. As compensation for this “inconvenience”, Airtran granted us free round-trip tickets to wherever they fly. SCORE!!!

Around March/April of 2006, Heavenly suggested that we use our free tickets to go to the Bahamas. I thought that we should go for my birthday, since October would probably be the best month for us to travel. After doing some research, we found a nice all-inclusive resort in Nassau. I called Airtran to determine if our travel dates were available, and they indeed were, but Airtran did not fly into Nassau…they flew into Freeport on the Grand Bahamas Island. Back to square one.

Lucky for us I found another nice all-inclusive resort in Freeport. I again called Airtran to book a flight to Freeport with my “free” airline ticket. The agent told me I had to pay $61 for international departure tax. Unscathed, I paid the fee and informed my girls of the extra charge. One problem…neither of them had the money to pay for the “free” ticket at that time.

By June, Heavenly and CoCo were ready to get their airline tickets. Heavenly called Airtran to redeem their tickets…Airtran in return said there were no more seats available for our anticipated travel dates. Square one anyone? At that time, we considered cancelling the trip altogether.

Heavenly, the determined one, called Airtran a few days later to determine if there were ANY available dates. The reservations agent helping her apparently didn’t like his job and was giving much attitude. The dude could not find her certificate number using his search methods and refused to search under alternate methods. He even went as far as implying that Heavenly was lying and did not have a compensation ticket. Heavenly called CoCo on 3-way and the agent did not want to help both of them simultaneously. He did finally find Heavenly’s certificate, but stated there were no available flights to the Bahamas for certificate passengers; they only allow a certain number of seats for “free” flights. At that point he thought they would just accept that answer and tried to end the call…now what he wanna go and do that for?

Heavenly and CoCo escalated the call to the reservations supervisor. By this time they had been on the phone for almost an hour and a half. The supervisor wanted this call resolved, so he basically conceded Heavenly and CoCo’s request and allowed them seats for our original requested travel dates.

So…we were set to go. And even though Airtran had us on a 5:30am departure with a 5 hour layover in the ATL airport…and even though they changed my flight reservation no less than three times without notifying me, and in the process screwed up my return flight to where I would be leaving ATL before I even arrived…at least we were on a plane…

Next, we needed to book a hotel…

 

(to be continued tomorrow…)

 

* Names changed to protect the guilty

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