I typically fly U.S. Airways on trips out of Savannah.
And I’ve been making a fair number of trips over the past year — so many that the woman at Starbucks at Savannah/Hilton Head International remembered me on Thursday as I awaited my flight to Detroit.
Only one time in the last decade have I missed a U.S. Airways connection in Charlotte, and that was because my flight was held on the ground in Savannah due to the proximity of Air Force One. Not a single flight has been canceled, either.
But this time my ultimate destination was a family reunion in Traverse City, MI, so I ended up flying Delta to take advantage of the direct flight to Detroit for the first leg of the trip and take advantage of the better fares to that part of the country.
I got out of Savannah just fine on Thursday afternoon. There were storms in Michigan and across the Midwest off and on all day, but we were close to on time arriving — and the sun and a rainbow were out when I got to the gate for my next flight out of Detroit on Thursday evening.
The flight was being delayed, however, for reasons unspecified.
And then it was delayed again. Then the gate was changed. And then it was delayed some more. Then another gate change was announced, immediately followed at 9 p.m.-ish by an announcement of the cancellation of the flight.
There was a later flight scheduled for Traverse City, but it was full and had a significant number of folks on stand-by already.
And all the flights from Detroit to Traverse City were full on Friday too.
Traverse City is in the midst of a sort of resort area in the summer, plus it was the opening weekend of the National Cherry Festival.
So on the night of 6/27, Delta automatically rebooked me to fly to LaGuardia on the evening of 6/28, and then fly direct to Traverse City early in the morning on 6/29. So now I had a ticket that no one in their right mind would ever book or use.
I briefly tried to get onto a late flight to Grand Rapids, but that plane was full too, was being endlessly delayed and, if it ever took off, wouldn’t have gotten me more than 100 miles closer to my destination.
So I rented a car in Detroit and drove the 250+ miles to Traverse City, arriving at 3:30 a.m. There’s not much traffic in Detroit at midnight on a Thursday — and pretty much none in the middle of the night in northern Michigan.
My Delta return trip on Monday — Traverse City to Detroit to Savannah — was supposed to be a pretty easy connection, with a layover of a little less than an hour.
But this time maintenance issues delayed my flight from Traverse City by an hour — just long enough to make me miss the on-time direct flight from Detroit to Savannah. Delta automatically rebooked me onto a flight to Atlanta, which I made with about 20 minutes to spare, but then that flight sat on the runway for an hour because of storms in the Atlanta area.
That delay should have made me miss my connection from Atlanta to Savannah, but that flight ended up also being delayed by well over an hour — maintenance issues again. I did, however, end up in 1st class for the 38 minute flight from Atlanta to Savannah . . .
When I called a Delta agent on Friday from Traverse City to say that I would not be checking in for my trip from Detroit to LaGuardia to Traverse City, I was told I would be able to get a refund for at least a portion of the first leg of my trip, but she said that I had to wait until the entire trip was over to do that. I was on the phone for about 20 minutes today, and I’m apparently going to get some kind of refund on my credit card in 7-10 business days. The agent had no way of knowing what the amount might be, although I’m pretty sure it won’t even cover the cost of my one-way rental car from Detroit to Traverse City.
I’d be curious to know how some of my fellow travelers ended up making the trip from Detroit to Traverse City. In retrospect, I wish I had still been at the gate when I decided to rent a car so that I could have offered a few of them a sketchy but efficient latenight ride across the state.
I did get to take a few pics of the crazy tunnel in the Detroit airport, including this one that I posted to my Instagram account: