Korea Trip

Jennifer's Korea trip finally arrived.  We had to be at the airport between 4:00-4:15 am on Thursday morning so that she could get on her flight from Billings to Seattle.  The airlines is Alaska Air.  Jennifer got everything she needed packed, weighed the suitcase and she has room to spare.  Went to bed early to get up early and on the road.

We arrived at the airport on time and there was one other person waiting.  That was when we were told that the flight was canceled.  Nobody at the ticket counter to talk to yet and no answer at the travel agency.  Travel agency is located in Los Angeles.

More people started to trickle in, so Gary and I left to eat breakfast.  I didn't think Jennifer would need her cell phone on the trip but her dad insisted she take it.  Glad she did.  We were able to keep track of what was going on with their flight.

Thursday was a disaster from the get go.  The plane was having mechanical problems and no way could Alaska air get them out of Billings on Thursday.  They ended up getting rented vans to make the trip to Bozeman/Belgrade to get on a flight to Seattle.  They arrived in Bozeman at 2:00 pm only to find out that their flight was delayed an hour.  No way were they making their flight out of Seattle to Korea.  Their original itinerary had them arriving in Seattle at 7:30 am and leaving for Korea at 2:30 pm.

They finally made it to Seattle.  The airlines paid for their motel rooms and then they got their instructions for Friday morning.  The plan is to get an early morning flight from Seattle to San Francisco to Korea.  Things were starting to look up.  Jennifer was pretty tired and worried that she wouldn't be making the trip to Korea.  I'm sure this messed up everything, there are 30 people affected by this.  Not too sure about the ones who were getting flights out of Minneapolis, Sioux Falls and Phoenix.

This morning the group was split up in Seattle, half went to Los Angeles the other half to San Francisco.  Jennifer is in the group that went to San Francisco.  They will all meet up again in Seoul sometime.

Jennifer is not sure if they are going to be reimbursed by the airlines for all this inconvenience.  I checked on Alaska Air web site.  One section says that if your are involuntarily removed from your flight for a certain length of time you will be compensated.  The other section says that if flight canceled no compensation.

I feel that they should be compensated, the cancellation was not due to weather or missing the flight.  The airlines canceled it and couldn't get them on time to where they needed to be.  Also they are missing a full day of their trip that they already paid for, meals and a hotel.

Jennifer said that Mrs. Park received some papers and I'm sure we will get this all figured out.  I may have to call the airlines on Jennifer's behalf to get answers.

The good news is that they are on their way and can enjoy their vacation.  They should have smooth sailing here on out as their bad luck already hit them.