Monday, October 31, 2022

Panic!

I lost my phone! Oh my gods, no. Right at the start of my big trip?! How could I be so careless!

Sat in my plane seat I jumped up. It wasn't in my hip pocket where it belongs, boarding was shortly closing, and I could picture it on the bench top at the gate where I sat waiting to board. The flight crew told me I had time—go back and get it. I battled the incoming tide of passengers upstream—"Excuse me. So sorry. Pardon me,"—and sprinted up the gangway. All my plans and schedules, three months of bookings, my personal information, access to my bank, all in my phone.... 

At the gate, breathless from stress, I asked if it was handed in. It was not. An unattended phone for free? In Sydney, that's stolen in seconds, as has indeed happened to me before. 

Consulting my phone to fill out a form once at the bank, standing near the entrance next to a junkie seeking refuge in the air conditioning, I left the damn thing on the counter. I barely walked out before realising, and pirouetted to see the junkie leaving an empty counter top. I appraised the situation in a second flat. 

"Mate! Did you see a phone left in there?" 

"Nah, mate, I didn't seen nothing."

But he doesn't want my phone; he wants money for a fix. "That's a shame," I said to him, "because I reckon I'd pay a reward for that."

Suddenly he knew things. "Oh, well, my friend might know. He's, uh, over in the park." 

So we walk to the park and negotiate a price for his friend the thief. I was happy to let him pretend to be the go-between and believe he was in control with a buyer on the hook for instant cash now. I was at his mercy and I did not want to lose sight of him for a second. If he sold that phone on the street, the data it held was worth thousands in fraud. He disappeared briefly to maintain the farce of the thieving friend before returning with the phone, and I gave him $60 to save myself the nightmare of identity theft. We parted as two happy bank customers.

Now I despaired. My phone is not on the bench top at the gate. "Are you still offering vouchers for relinquished seats?" I ask. They were, as they'd overbooked the flight. I'm thinking I might need to stay in Dallas to get a new phone, secure my data, and adjust all my plans. A very kind gentleman lent me his phone to call mine, but inconclusively there was no answer. It was either unattended or in the hands of a thief. 

Could it have fallen out of my pocket on the plane, slipping between the seats? The airlines actually specifically mention this scenario and advise against digging it out yourself in flight (it risks disconnecting wires). I am permitted to board again, and I tell them I might be back for the voucher. Now I am last on the plane, and the sympathetic cabin crew announces to all the passengers that a phone has been lost. 

But it hasn't. It's sitting stupidly in my seat, blinking one missed call.

Once again, for those new here: Travel is an exercise in controlled anxiety.

Saturday, October 29, 2022

"Post-pandemic" travel

Itchy feet. The summer of 2022 is the first time since rolling COVID lockdowns that the public is able—ready and eager—to travel en masse at pre-pandemic numbers. But is the industry ready?

It certainly wants to be. Airlines will happily sell you tickets regardless of whether they are. COVID-19 first struck when I was preparing to return to Australia after a year in Canada, and as nations were closing their borders Air Canada was offering to sell you some kind of future-proof fare: buy it now and travel later when you can! One might politely call it voluntary credit, or more accurately call it a sucker bet. And when Australia committed the internationally criminal act of closing its borders to its own citizens, Air Canada was happily selling flights to Oz that didn't exist, as I learned from one half of a stranded young Aussie couple I ran into working in a supermarket to fund their forced stay after buying such nonextant fares. They were advised by an airline employee they ran into to double-check their tickets because "we don't have any outgoing flights." Sure enough, their limited funds had been fraudulently snatched and tied up in one of those marvellous Air Canada future-proof credits. What efficient corporate crooks. The CEO's bonus has to be funded somehow.

When I recently flew out of Dallas, Texas, there was an appeal at the gate by American Airlines for six passengers willing to forgo their flights to Oaxaca, Mexico, for a $600 voucher because the plane was overbooked. How is this legal? I feel sure only one or two people would ever volunteer, if indeed any at all, and that we left behind some unhappy travellers when we departed the tarmac.

My own subsequent flight out of Oaxaca, getting me to Costa Rica via Cancun, was unilaterally scheduled to four days later by Volaris Airlines. Nice. At least I was notified? "Hey, we screwed you! If you would like to do something about it, cancel your flight!" So I did, and got a refund (a credit!) which I then immediately applied to a more expensive ticket via Mexico City that would keep me on schedule. Honestly, you constantly have to keep your wits about you with these bastards.

Even just testing domestic waters in Canada, I tried to fly within British Columbia and couldn't even get out of the airport. The airline offloaded my backpack and my flight took off without me when I was stuck in security for an hour as a hundreds-dense queue was processed through a single operating luggage scanner (of three available). When I alerted the queue attendant who was masquerading as competent security staff that I was being paged for the second time—perhaps they could bump me to the front—I received the following answer: "I'm sorry sir, you'll have to ask the people in front of you. We just do security." I wore an aghast emoji for a face. A genuine arsehole would have done exactly as she requested and caused utter chaos in the queue, while I looked on and applauded. Why am I not an arsehole when I need one.

Understand one thing about flying in 2022: the industry does not give one shit about you. Happy travels!