A couple of years ago I flew Delta from Monroe La. to Atlanta, made my conection and the flew to LAX (funny huh!)I had ten minutes to get from one plane to the other and made it. The lady at the counter called me by name as I ran up to the gate, laughed and told me they were waiting on me. Luggage wasn’t so lucky, it didn’t arrive until the next day.

There is a more general rule. When any company screws its employees, its customers, or its vendors, it’s only a matter of time before it screws all three groups. The airlines have been willing participants in the total abandonment of common sense, and we will end up paying for it.

Yup. Bailouts and all that. Makes me feel like a chump for living mostly debt-free and pay-as-I-go, instead of borrowing over my head when the credit was so easy, and just letting BHO bail me out. And we just bailed out the UAW, of all things.

You get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you tax. So we are in for more union stupidity, and less capital gains. Whoopie. No doubt the democrats will insist that the cure is even more bailout money. I think Bernie’s column at http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2008/12/post_20.html sums the UAW bailout quite well, especially since it was posted *before* our moron-in-chief made his move.

I tend to go into most CO flights with some sort of backup plan — preferably alternate routes if I’m on CO, definitely alternate routes and phone nos if I have connections or am dealing with multiple carriers. You might get lucky and get an agent on the phone who can straighten things out (esp on elite line), but if it’s very deep into irregular ops, then even the elite lines tend not to be a good option. It gets even more complicated if one is flying a combination of CO and another airline.

Now, if you are in an airport with a CO President’s Club, the agents who staff those tend to be VERY helpful. Even if you aren’t a member, I believe you can pay a fee to get in. Sometimes that’s well worth it, esp if your flight is delayed and you need to reschedule (plus there are complimentary drinks and wifi, and that can be nice when under duress), because again, the staff there acts like they give a damn.

Anyway, you probably already know all of this, but in case a CO flyer who doesn’t stumbles upon this post, maybe this comment will be helpful.

When your trip is done, you should probably email your comments about the experience to CO customer care — and if you are a flyertalk member, also pass it along to COInsider (that’s the handle for a CO customer service exec who monitors the boards). Who knows, CO may deposit some miles into your OP account for the inconvenience. Sorry to hear of your experience so far. I hope the rest of the trip is great for ya!