I thought I would give you the details on how it came to be that I was stuck at the airport for 8 hours, from my previous airport lounge lizard post. Luckily, I wasn't stuck for 48 hours in a Florida airport like, Older Than Dirt was.

Basically, this past Xmas I decided to finally spend time with family that I hadn't visited in almost 10 years. Mainly because of my busy schedule and also because of the expense. Anyway, I decided enough was enough and I booked a full itinerary, several weeks in advance (on Delta), for 6 different flights which I got some great prices on.

The night before my flight, I decided that instead of bothering a friend with driving so early in the morning to catch a 7am flight, leaving my car at the airport for 2 weeks (paying the high cost of airport parking) or taking a $60.00 taxi ride I would jump on public transportation (the Los Angeles Metro) which I had been hearing about for years from friends how convenient and fast it was (cheap, no hassle, no need to find parking, etc).

So at 4am in the morning (I wasn't going to take any chances missing my flight) and with my $3.00 all day Metro pass and bag over my shoulder, and a smile on my face at the money I was saving I proceeded towards the airport, which with a car is about a 40 min max. drive.

Well, after an excruciatingly long ride and then long wait in the middle of nowhere,(when I had to transfer) standing in gusting freezing winds (even in Los Angeles) for a Metro that ended up being "Out of Service" and then when I finally got on the next one, somehow the actual stop where you would get off on for the airport was experiencing some other technical difficulty and I had to go to the next stop and walk about a half mile back. Anyway, after all this I did somehow end up missing my flight by a few minutes. Stupid, considering it was a less than 1 hr flight from LAX to SFO.

At this point, I was pretty tired and weary but I wasn't going to let this faze me. I thought it was just a minor setback and I still had my whole trip ahead of me. So the first thing I did was go to the ticket counter and say I literally just missed my flight and showed my tickets and asked if there was another flight I could get on. I was told that the next flight was not until that night. I called my mom (the first leg of my trip) and told her what happened and to hold off having someone leave to pick me up at the airport. She then said she would just log-on and pay for another flight right away that I could jump on. I called her back in 7 minutes and she gave me the flight info on another airline leaving in 40 minutes. After scrambling across LAX airport to the complete other side and running to the front of the long winding ticket line I was told that I was too late to catch that flight. I thought that that was ridiculous that with 40 min before the flight was supposed to take off they still weren't able to help me get on that flight. I argued a few minutes (trying to be nice about it so as to not be hauled off my security or something) and then finally I had to call my mom back with the unfortunate news that the non-refundable ticket she just bought at the last minute was probably worthless. Not knowing of anything else better to do, I told her I was going to stand in line and somehow get them to get me on the next flight. I then stood in line for another 30 minutes or so got up to the front of the line and explained what happened. Luckily the lady at the counter was able to get me on the next flight which was something like 4pm (unfortunately this was 8 hours later) by paying a small penalty amount of $30. or something.

So, not wanting to leave the airport on foot (after everything that had happened) I then proceeded to wander the airport and eat airport food for 8 hours until my flight.

When my flight finally took off from LAX I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking everything was under control. Little did I know, that the next day I would find out that since I missed the first flight of my itinerary, all the rest of my flights had automatically been canceled. And all the flights I spent hours working out on-line to get the good prices for, during the holiday season, had now disappeared.

So after about 4 hours going back with Delta customer service, them telling me they couldn't do anything about it and telling me about all the expensive and or booked flights I managed to work out another itinerary. With about $1000.00 more, off my credit card to do so. I'll spare you the details of the conversation but I literally talked to about 5 different customer service representatives who just referred me back and forth.

Then two more flights in to my trip coming from Buffalo to JFK airport (and 2 whole hours between connecting flights) I somehow again missed my flight. The first flight arrived on time but I literally waited for my bags to come off the plane for about 40 minutes. I then got on to the in between airline shuttle service and because the little maps that tell you which shuttle goes in which direction from which airline was so confusing I ended up going the opposite direction for about 25 minutes before the shuttle circled back around to where I was trying to go. I get off the shuttle with about 30 minutes to spare and the auto check in computer will not work so close to the flight. I go up to the counter and again they tell me 30 minutes is too close for them to be able to get me on to the plane. Is this normal, I'm one of the most laid back guys in the world about this kind of stuff but this was stressing me out! Coming from the type of person who has never missed a flight in his life and who is always early for appointments I just couldn't believe this happened twice in one trip.

Anyway, aside from the lack of assistance in helping to get people to flights they are about to miss the main thing I couldn't believe was the fact that if a pay for a bunch of flights and then miss the first flight there's no way to prevent all my tickets from being canceled. I also couldn't believe that when I missed my first flight the Delta customer service rep, after I showed her my itinerary, didn't say anything about the fact that all my flights were canceled. I had to find out hours before my next flight when I was checking to see if it was departing on time.

Does anyone have any other information on this? I feel there's something wrong with this and I was taken advantage of...