How Do You Spell Incompetent?

Forgive me reader, for I must have sinned. It has been six days since I last saw my luggage.

I arrived at Orlando Airport last night at 12:30am after a delayed departure from Atlanta. God bless my wife for getting me my Delta Sky Miles Gold status. I had first class upgrades all the way from Phoenix to Florida. And I was actually hopeful that my suitcase would be waiting for me at the American Airlines baggage office when I arrived. After all, I had spoken on Saturday to Kam, the American Airlines agent in Ottawa, who was looking at my bag. And although she was explaining all the reasons why she couldn’t put the bag onto the flight she was about to load in Ottawa so that it could find its way to me in Phoenix, she promised that she would send it out on the first flight on Sunday morning so that it would arrive in Orlando at 3:20pm Sunday afternoon. It sounded so good.

But no. My suitcase was not in Orlando. And worst of all, both the very helpful Lawana (the woman at American’s baggage office in Orlando) and the very unhelpful man who answered my call to American’s 1-800 lost baggage help line confirmed my worst fears. American Airlines had managed to once again lose my bag. They have absolutely no idea where it is. To quote Lawana, “This is stupid.”

So, just to recap, I checked my bag at Bellingham Airport on Wednesday, April 11. Both American and United refused to even look for my bag when I was delayed overnight that event at O’Hare. My bag never arrived at my first destination of Ottawa, Ontario on Thursday, April 12. After speaking in Ottawa on Thursday, I flew on to Phoenix, Arizona. America Airlines supposedly found my bag in Ottawa on Friday, but then lost it again. Then they found it again in Ottawa on Saturday, but couldn’t send it out that day because the agent in Ottawa was too busy. But she promised to send it on Sunday so it would be in Orlando when I arrived here. It is now Monday, April 16, and my bag is once again completely unaccounted for.

And by the way, in case you haven’t been following the news, American Airlines flight attendants are going on strike tomorrow, effectively grounding the airline for at least one day. So I am not holding out much hope of my bag reaching me at all while I’m here in Orlando.

At this point, I am just praying that it eventually turns up and gets sent to me once I get back to Bellingham. Because as any of you who know me well enough can probably imagine, in addition to clothing, the bag contains lots of the electronic doodads that help me continue to live up to my wife’s description of me when traveling, “Like an entire family of Japanese tourists.”