AKA The Day American Airlines Crapped The Bed
Saturday, March 23, 2024
We woke up this morning to huge thunderstorms. Lots of rain, thunder and lightning. Super loud thunder!
Yesterday, I had arranged for Rufus the cabbie to drive Todd to the airport at 8 am and to take us at 11:30, and he showed up right on time for both trips, despite the rain.
Nathan and I arrived at the airport, sailed through American Airlines bag drop, TSA, and US Customs. We found everyone in the gate area, and we were all feeling great about the trip and were excited to get home. Then, one by one, flights were delayed, delayed again, and delayed again, before being canceled. Of our extended group of 10 adults and 3 children, only Grant who was flying from Nassau to Helsinki via Miami was able to fly out.
The remainder of the day was spent in American Airlines hell. Nathan and my flight was the first flight canceled, but we couldn’t leave the airport without our bags. We actually couldn’t even leave the airport without an airline escort. The only way out of the Nassau airport is on a plane.
There are also no customer service desks in the Nassau Airport, so the line of irate travelers just queues up at the (only) American Airlines gate, and when another airline needs to take over the gate, the whole queue, gate agents and all, move to a new gate.
American Airlines personnel were clearly overwhelmed with stranded travelers and people trying to rebook flights to get back to the US.
At one point in the afternoon, I had us booked on a United flight to get home, and there were open seats on it, but due to the lines and the angry mob, there was no way to get our bags and redeposit them with United. Plan abandoned.
Our second plan was to rebook a flight with American for the next day, and I managed to get through via the 1-800 number. But we still couldn’t leave without our bags. In order to get our bags, we needed to stand in the long, long, hours-long line to get escorted by AA personnel to retrieve bags from the bag room and get escorted out of the airport. By the time that actually happened, I’d found a ‘reasonable’ place to stay for $180. By 5:50 pm, we had our bags, and our new lodging was sending a silver Tesla to pick us up.
One by one, everyone’s flight was canceled. There was one other room in the place we were staying, and Dave’s wife’s parents Tom and Joy took it. Joan’s sister, husband, and baby stayed at another hotel, and Dave, Joan, and their kids stayed somewhere else. Todd was able to sleep on our pull-out sofa bed, so 5 of us were all on one property.
Since Nathan and I had been canceled first, we also managed to get bags first and get the heck away from the airport first. The silver Tesla came to get us and drove us to the room. The Tesla driver, Rich, offered to stop at a 24/7 convenience store so we could pick up dinner, but we nicely refused. After the day we had, whatever was on offer at the convenience store would simply not do. Plus, we were craving pizza.
So we quickly dropped our bags in the room, donned our foul weather clothing, as it was still storming, and walked out the drive. Nathan was mapping our location with his phone so that we could get back after dinner, and I had a walking route set up on Google Maps to get us to the nearest pizza restaurant. It was either 2.2 or 4+ kilometers away and would take either an hour or forever to walk there.
As we were getting situated at the end of the drive, a neighbor pulled in and asked if we needed help. We explained that we were preparing to walk to Pizza Labs and the look on her face told us that was not a great idea. Is it ridiculous? I asked. Yes, it’s ridiculous, she said. She told us to hop in, move her kids’ junk over, and she’d drive us someplace for dinner. So we hopped in.
She drove us through the flooded Nassau streets and deposited us at the Fish Fry – a locals’ area filled with shack after shack of local restaurants, lined up, one right after the other. There was a mini police station there, and lots of cabs, so she told us to have dinner and catch a cab back to our room.
The restaurant she had said was the best only took cash, and back at the airport I took out a limited amount of additional cash, which we needed for cabs back and forth, so we either needed another ATM or a restaurant that took cards. We found one, Curly’s, which was two doors down, had aggressively friendly staff, and when we explained about the whole airport, not supposed to be here, no food, neighbor driving situation, they deemed it was meant to be.
So we had the most delicious and authentic meal at Curly’s. I had the cracked conch, and Nathan had the stewed grouper, both with plantains, peas and rice, and macaroni bake.
At the end of the night, they found a cabbie for us, and within minutes we were back in our room. Within a few minutes of our arrival, Todd, Tom, and Joy showed up, so we made up the sofa bed, picked out some breakfast bars from Joy’s stash, and went to bed.
Tomorrow is a new day, and we are very excited to get home.