I woke up right on time and left the hostel just ten minutes later. I had to head to Incheon Airport instead of Gimpo Airport where I had arrived from. Incheon is significantly farther. The hostel owner said the train could get me there in 30 minutes if I took the airport express instead of the local subway I come in on.
After getting on the train, I noticed it was making commuter stops. I had gotten on the right line, but there was a direct train and a commuter train. The direct train only goes between the airport and one station in central Seoul. If I wanted to get on the direct train, I had to turn around and go backwards. I had built in a one-hour buffer, so I decided to wait it out on the commuter train. I lost 30 minutes due to the slower train, but was still doing OK. Then it took 10 expected minutes to get from the train station to the terminal. Once in the terminal, I walked from one end to the other looking for Cathay Pacific with no luck. 15 minutes later, I started looking for help.
I went to Airport Information with 5 minutes to spare. She pointed me to the Cathay Pacific area which was completely across the airport from where I was. When I got to the Business Class check-in desk, an incredibly sorry attendant informed me that Taipei check-in had closed three minutes ago. He personally escorted me to the ticket counter, apologizing profusely and explaining that it was due to legal regulations and they valued me as a Oneworld Emerald member and would make things right. However, what he didn't realize is that there is only one flight to Taipei from Seoul each day. He also didn't know that I am traveling on an incredibly rare award ticket from Amerian Airlines.
The Cathay Pacific ticket counter didn't even know where to start. They told me they had never seen a ticket like mine. That makes sense considering I doubt many people have the time or the miles to book a massive 16-leg itinerary in business class like mine. In fact, I knew before I walked up to the counter what I was going to have to do. Since it is a mileage award, CX (Cathay) can't touch the ticket. I had to call American Airlines. From Seoul. On a ticket subject to partner availability restrictions. In other words, there was a really good chance I was going to be stuck in Seoul for weeks.
I won't go into all the details, but my ticket requires me to fly my exact routing without any changes. Changing the routing of any segment cancels the entire ticket. Dates and times are changeable for free at any time, but are subject to availability.
My first issue was calling AA. I only loaded enough cash onto my international SIM for emergencies. I only have it so others can call me. Calling an airline can eat 30 minutes and I only have 10 or so. I asked Cathay to let me use their phone, but policies prohibited it. They suggested renting a cell phone from the local company here in Korea, but with rates of $4 a minute to the US, that wasn't going to work. Using my laptop, I can call any local or international number for free through a work application but I have to have wifi. Of course, the only public wifi available was so slow as to be useless.
Eventually, I gave in and paid for a premium wifi service. The login page was in Korean, but it turns out all login pages look roughly the same in any language. I have no idea what user agreement I agreed to, so I hope it was reasonable. Then I called AA (with one bar of service) and the automated system couldn't understand me due to the bad connection. The agent wasn't doing much better, but she was patient and over the next 20 minutes figured out that I was in South Korea and really wanted her to put me on an airplane. After an additional 20 minutes, she let me know that she could get me a flight on June 15th...ten days later. Not good.
I then did something I have never done. I pulled the status card. I explained that I spent over $75K with American Airlines last year and as an Executive Platinum member I expected to be in Taipei tomorrow regardless of what the rules were. She could see that missing this flight was going to effectively end my trip since the missed flights would keep cascading. A miracle, it worked! Whatever supervisor she called apparently sympathized with an American stranded in Seoul and made it happen.
Now I have a flight to Hong Kong tomorrow morning and a connection to Taipei around lunch. The connection time is only 10 minutes which worries me a little, but beggars can't be choosers.
Crisis averted!
No comments:
Post a Comment