Still in Binghamton...

Wow. What a fiasco this flight situation has been. Needless to say, we still have not left for San Francisco! However, I think we will finally be on our way tomorrow morning... Here is the story:

Jeremy already wrote about our first flight being canceled. That shifted us from the original 6am Syracuse flight this morning to a 5:15pm Syracuse flight this evening. Which was fine, since that allowed us get a full night's sleep. We also saved money on gasoline by having Jeremy's parents drive us straight to the airport, rather than leaving our car there for them to pick up later. However, just 15 minutes before we were going to leave for the airport, Jeremy did a last check of the flight status. It said that our flight from Syracuse to JFK was AGAIN canceled.

I instantly got on the phone and called Jet Blue. The first girl I talked to said that the flight was still on time, but when she went to look for more updated information, the call was dropped. I called back, and after waiting in a queue for 15 minutes, I discovered that the flight had indeed been canceled, and we started working on other possibilities/solutions. There was a Delta flight leaving from the Binghamton airport that would get us to JFK in time for our San Fran flight, and we thought we might be able to talk them into putting us on that plane (which would have cost us $500 otherwise). While waiting for a supervisor to approve our alternatives, the call was dropped.... AGAIN. And when we tried to call back, we got a message that said "We are experiencing unusually high call volumes, try your call again later, this call ends now... *click*" We got this message for about 15 more minutes, before finally getting back into the long queue. In the meantime, not knowing what else to do, we got in the car and started driving towards the Binghamton airport, hoping that Delta would hook us up with cheap last-minute seats to help them fill a mostly empty plane... a plane that was scheduled to leave in 45 minutes!

However, on the way we finally got in touch with Jet Blue, who would not give us ANY compensation for another flight. And once we got to the airport, Delta was also delayed, and would not have gotten us to JFK in time for our connecting flight anyhow.

SO...
We went back home, and looked for other options. The JFK-SF flights were all on time and running smoothly... it was just the Syracuse-JFK flights that kept getting canceled. So we looked into getting Short Line Bus tickets to Port Authority, and transfers to the JFK airport. Unfortunately, the buses took way too long to get us there in time for this evening's flight.

After doing some research, we called Jet Blue back, and got our reservation changed so that we were only booked for the JFK-SF flight tomorrow evening, June 29th, at 9pm. Unfortunately, Jet Blue would not refund ANY of the Syracuse-JFK flight, since "other options" were being offered to us. Apparently it didn't matter that these "other options" were for TWO days after our original flight. Which sucks.

But despite their reluctance to help with alternative transportation, we then went to the bus station in Binghamton, where we bought bus tickets (including the connection) to the JFK airport, for a total of $102. As of RIGHT NOW, we will be leaving from Binghamton by bus at 8:40am tomorrow morning, which will get us to Port Authority by 12:30, and from there buses will run every 20 minutes or so to the JFK airport. The ride from the bus station to the airport will take over an hour, but it would still get us there in PLENTY of time to check in, go through security, and FINALLY GET ON THAT PLANE TO SAN FRANCISCO!!!

Unfortunately, we will be traveling for about 22 hours tomorrow (UGH) before we reach our destination, but right now, neither of us cares... as long as we actually GET THERE. As of right now, there is still a plane going from Syracuse to JFK tomorrow at 5:15, which is a reservation we could have kept. However, the morning Jet Blue flights from Syracuse are already being canceled and we don't want to take a chance on missing THIS flight too. So screw it, we're taking the bus. We're ready to start this vacation.

Jeremy's parents really helped us through quite a bit of this. His mom apparently used to be a travel agent, so she helped us look through some of our alternatives, and offered some good advice. They also helped get our bus ticket, and then took us to Little Venice (a wonderful Italian restaurant which happens to be right next to the bus station) for dinner. Now we have *one* more evening to kill before a loooooooong day of traveling tomorrow. Hopefully things will actually go as planned this time.

Apparently storms, especially in NYC, have been really bad the past couple of days. And so far, even though we have had our vacation cut short by a couple of days, at least we still have a whole month of traveling to look forward to. I am sure there are other travelers that have been inconvenienced far worse than we have. Jeremy has been a little pissed off, and I am getting quite restless, but things really could be worse.

So tomorrow morning, we'll try this again. We're getting up at 6am, showering, going to Chris's diner downtown for breakfast (also right near the bus station), then hopping on a bus at 8:40am. We'll probably have a lot of time to kill in NYC, but being there early and waiting is better than getting there late and missing the flight. So here we go.

Wish us better luck this time around! Hopefully the next post will be from California.