Rah doe kankee kung (aka my kind of scum)

A simple formula for winter success…

Gravy Master was key here as this amazing snow sculpture actually smells like what I’d imagine Jabba the Hutt would smell like – fatty old gravy.  Unfortunately, this seems to be Tom Brady’s (my dog) favorite flavor of snow cone.

Next up, either a Rancor, R2-D2, or the Sandworm from Dune.

JetBlue Fail

The plan was perfect.   Fly out to the Phoenix, AZ post-Christmas to escape the New England weather for a week.  For New Year’s Eve I’d be driving up to Las Vegas to stay at the Hilton and enjoy quality gambling, free drinks, and amazing sights for a couple nights.  Then fly back in early January, refreshed, tan, and rich off my craps’ winnings.  Everything was set, and then… the storm hit.

The storm hit on Sunday so I figured I’d be fine flying out on a Tuesday, but to my despair when I went to check-in for my flight I received the wonderful message, shown below, which read “The status of your flight has changed, please see a JetBlue crewmember at our airport Full-Service counter.”  Clearly this was JetBlue’s first failure as I was not at the airport checking in on my laptop.

I had to go and check the status of my flight to find out that the ‘status change’ of my flight is that it was cancelled.  Then I had to go back to the homepage to find a contact link to uncover the 800 number to give them a call to try and fix things.  This was clearly a pain in the neck, especially after the already aggravating discover that my flight perfect plan was being disrupted.  This failure could be easily remedied by simply providing a more effective and actionable error message such as:

So my next step was clearly to give JetBlue a call to try and (i) see what’s going on, and (ii) reschedule my flight.  This experience was also a poor one.  I called 1800JETBLUE and here is the EXACT transcript from my first ~10 calls (that’s right, I suffered through this 10 times).

JetBlue Automated System (JBAS): “Thank you for calling JetBlue airways, para Espagnol porfafor marke el numero neueve. We are currently experiencing extremely high call volumes with very long hold times.  If you wish to proceed with this call, please choose from the following options: for flight status press 1, for reservations press 2, for getaways packages press 3.  Press pound to repeat these options.”

Me: [enter 1]

JBAS: “Due to extremely high call volumes all agents are currently busy.  Please stay on the line while we try your call again.”

(Hold music for roughly 7 seconds)

JBAS: “All agents are still busy, please stay on the line while we try to extend your call again.”

(Hold music for roughly 7 seconds)

JBAS: “Thank you for calling JetBlue Airways, we are currently experiencing extremely high call volumes with very long hold times.  If you need to book a flight or check your real-time flight status, please visit our website at JetBlue.com. If you need to speak to a JetBlue representative please try back at a later time.  We are doing the best we can to manage our call volumes at this time.  This call will end now, but we look forward to helping you as soon as we can.”

[call disconnected]

As I said, this process was repeated like 8 times (and then another 5 times to get the transcript perfected).  So my next step was to try and change my flight manually.  I went through the necessary clicks to get to the flight search page and got the results shown below.

Basically, “Whoops, we didn’t find any flights that matched your search” was JetBlue’s way of telling me that Monday 12/27 through Friday 12/31 all flights had been oversold / cancelled.  Leaving me with the sole option of flying out on Saturday, January 1st, just to fly back on Sunday, January 2nd.  Brilliant!  or not given that it’s roughly a 6 hour flight and the Las Vegas drive is 5 hours, and the hotel was booked for Thursday night and Friday night.

So my plan is in a tattered state at this point.  My wonderful girlfriend is in Arizona waiting for me (she flew out before Christmas to be with her family and it is her I was going to visit and travel to Vegas with) and I have no flight scheduled to get me out there.  I will work on getting a hold of JetBlue, and will return to this once I have more information.

[update]

So I was clever enough to utilize the flight status phone hotline and then press zero to access the non-advertised access an operator option.  While I was forced to listen to songs like “Answer in the Sky” by Elton John for 44 minutes and 21 seconds this option at least put me in a queue to talk with a live agent.  After the extended hold time I got a live agent on the phone and 15 minutes later both my flight to and from Phoenix were cancelled and fully refunded (well done on that part at least JetBlue).  My well laid plan fell apart and now my girlfriend is flying home on December 31st so we can at least be together on New Year’s Eve, but  with our hotel room in Vegas left empty and alone.

Final Score

New England Weather – 1, Travel Plans – 0

Snow falling on … Maples?

First major snowfall Buffalo came over the past few days – and has not stopped since.  Luckily for me i’ve been working on my Advanced Exam lately so I find myself at school from 10:00 to roughly 3AM everyday.  I enjoy this as I work better at night when my brain is slightly tired out so I can’t focus on the many distractions it typically manages to find (such as writing this blog post).   Also, leaving school at 3AM allows me to walk to my car, and then apartment, in a very serene and quiet world, especially when the world is covered in snow for further sound insulation.  It’s really a welcomed silence that one rarely finds these days.