- Basle - Amsterdam KL/ Y F70: HERE!!
- Amsterdam - Seattle DL Y+ A330-300: THERE!!
- Seattle - Salt Lake City DL Y+ B737-800: THERE!!
- Salt Lake City - Las Vegas DL Y+ 757-200: THERE!!
- Las Vegas - Detroit DL Y+ 737-800: Now
- Detroit - Paris CDG AF Y A340-300: Soon
- Paris CDG - Basle AF Y ERJ190: No report
Sorry, the introduction will be quite long, to forgive me, you'll find some Nevada pictures as bonus at the end.
After a lovely vacation in Wyoming and Nevada, it was time to head back home. We'll give the car back and proceed to the shuttle bus to the DL First / Elite counters. I'll try to print the boarding passes a few times before giving up and then went to the desk. Before being able to say anything, the lady there re-directs me to the self service printers.
I stop her, and explain that it did not work. She takes my passeport from my hands without saying anythings and goes to try herself. It was sunday morning and God may have been very busy in churches, so the lord wasn't of any help to make de printer work ;)
She comes back and begins with the manual check-in. After a while she orders us (yes it was more an order than a query) to put the bags on the weighting scales. To my surprise, over 4 bags, two are weighting 50 lbs and two 52. The franchise was 50 lbs. Before going to the airport, I used a little device that I always use to weight my bags when I travel and that works very well and it gave 2x 48 and 2x 50.
As said, I was quite surprised, but 2lbs are not a big thing, specially when you are elite plus, and I wasn't too worried about it. Big mistake.
Nelly (let's call her like that, as this firstname suited her so well), pushes the 4 bags behind her and announces that this will be a total of USD 200.- in excess weight fee.
I told her, in a very calm tone, that it is common sense to allow passengers 2lbs tolerance as the scales are never exact. She gave us such a bad look and told us that there will not be any negociations. You pay or you leave.
I replied that this is not a way to speak to people, and specially when they are Elite Plus, trusted customers. The answer was that's not my business, again, you pay or you leave. Or you re-arrange your stuff'
I was really not in the mood in re-arranging and shuffling things from our checked bags to our carry ons, as we were close to the limit everywhere.
At that moment, her colleague told her that she could let us go, it's only a little overweight, and with Elite customer she needs to be a bit flexible. Nelly will litterally kill her with her look and answered that it was her decision and that she would stick to it.
At that time the duty manager passed by, and told her exactly the same. She did ask him if he was disjudging her. He gave us a sorry look and will say that he sticks to his employee's decision.
At that point I was so angry and upset that I slammed my credit card at the desk and told her to do whatever she wants to do with it, but that I'll make a formal claim with her name once home. She'll answer that this is my right but that I will not get anything. I won't anser anything.
Once the USD 200.- debited she hands us the boarding passes over and informs us that the tram that links the check in terminal with the boarding gates out of order is, that there are replacement busses but that the wait to arrive to the gates will be two hours at least and that we will miss our flight. We should contact the agents at the gates for the rebooking. At that point it was 10:00 for a 11:40 departure.
Needless to say that it was the last thing I'd like to hear. We will rush to TSA in order to try to make the flight but will be stopped by Nelly's colleague that will tell us not to worry, that the shuttle busses are now well running and that there is maybe a maximum of 30 minutes wait and we'll make the flight. She gave us her name to document our claim. She felt so sorry about her colleague behavior…!!
She was true, once TSA donne, a lot of employee hold signs to guide us towards the busses for all terminals. All in all, we needed 40 minutes from the end of the check in till our arrival at the gate.
Now, a bit of spotting:
A330 Hawaiian bound to HNL
Our !757 -200
MD 83 Allegiant!
The busses that were chartered to do the shuttle service:
A few people missed their flights however and needed a rebooking:
737-800 Alaska:
Boarding in Y+ and very good legroom:
No IFE on a flight of more than 04:00
Then, the joke of the century: Nelly enters the plane at the end of the boarding, takes the mike and makes an announcement to inform that the plane was overbooked, that 4 pax need to exit the plane and to let other people take their seats. Delta would offer a 400 USD voucher, meals and rebooking onto another flight. And then, as long as nobody would leave the plane, that we would all stay there!!! Eventually, when she rose the offer to 800 USD, she found 4 'volonteers'.
I have never experienced that. Usually overbookings are handled at the gate, never inside the plane!
Anyway…
Time to leave and to spot everything that is around and available:
MD90-83, JANET 737-600, Southwest, biz-jets, and so on….
Take off and lovely views over the airfield:
Nice reflexion on the engine:
Grand Canyon with West Grand Canyon Airport visible on the upper right:
BOB service, USD 10 for those two sandwiches, chips and a a cookie. Quite ok, but the sandwiches were a bit dry.
Looking towards first class:
Photos bonus :
Mirage :
Eldorado Canyon (an old gold mine that can be visited. Should you be interested, it is after the small village of Nelson)
Very hot there:
Bellagio:
Overflying Vegas with an helicopter:
Red Rock Canyon:
Lake Mead and Valley of Fire:
Great photos, you practically sold Las Vegas to me!
The whole Nelly deal is laughable, I though that type of obnoxious people only exist in sitcoms. The BOB didn't look like 10USD worth, I would rather spend them on a burger to go or something like that.
Thanks for sharing!