Lesson learned: Always Check Your Ticket

December 3, 2007 - I am finally back home from California and I can honestly say that I am glad to be back. As much as I had great time in CA, towards the end of the trip, I felt it was time to go home. Of course, in regular "it could only happen to Felix" fashion, I ran into a bit of trouble coming home - and here's the story.

At 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, the day that I was supposed to fly back to Toronto, I decided, out of the blue, to go online and change my seat for the returned flight. I logged onto the Air Canada website and quickly found out my reservation no longer exists. I figured AC must have made an error, so I called them and asked why I couldn't see my reservation online. The agent did a bit of research and told me that they have no records of my reservation either! I started to freak out of course, explaining to them that I have my itinerary with me and I have all the information written down. I was asked to double check the dates on the ticket and that was when I said: crap (well, I said more than that, but you get the point).

Apparently, stupid me booked my return flight for the SAME DATE as my departure flight. As in, my ticket says I'm flying from Toronto to Las Vegas on Nov 24th, and then returning from Los Angeles to Toronto, also on the 24th. I have no idea how I made such a huge error and how the system also didn't catch it. Anyway, I tried to rebook the flight, but because I'm now technically buying a new ticket, the Saturday night flight to Toronto would cost me an additional $800. There was no way I was going to pay $800 to fly home - not when my round-trip ticket was only $470. So I opted to stay in California for an additional night and fly home Sunday (I only had to pay $42 for the Sunday flight) while I waved bye to my friends.

My last night in California was spent inside a huge hotel room by the airport. Because I didn't have the car, I couldn't exactly wander around town. I kept watching the Weather Network to learn more about the huge snowstorm back in Toronto. On Sunday, my flight was further delayed because of the storm. We didn't manage to take off until early afternoon - more than 2 hours behind schedule. The airport and the plane was pretty packed - I got one of those crappy middle seats on an old plane (with no personal tv!!). This was of course after I got pulled aside at security checkpoint at the airport for "a more thorough search" of my carry-on and shoes. Not that I was complaining, I was just happy to come home.

So now I'm back home. What's with this cold weather? I miss the sun, the palm trees, and the 20+ degrees weather in California already.