Airlines can kiss my @$$

The last time I saw my suitcase, it was 9:21am on Sunday.

Have I seen it since I left it in the capable incompetent hands of the skycap at the Birmingham Airport?  Nooooooo.

Apparently it was too much for the skycap to take my bag in 20 feet to the TSA screening area.  Instead, I checked my bag with him at 9:21am, and TSA then scanned it at 9:47.  That’s…let’s see…26 minutes later.

I arrive in New York at 1:51pm EST.  My bag does not, as it never made it on to my airplane.  How my bag could get lost when I was on a direct flight was beyond me.  Truck to the baggage complaint area in LaGuardia, wait my turn, hand the guy my claim, and he tells me that my bag was pulled and will be arriving on a flight into LaGuardia at 5pm today, and where can it be delivered to?  I give him my parent’s address, grumble, and away we go.

That man was the last person to give me a definitive answer as to where my bag is.  Last I heard, it had definitely made it to Cincinnati, but the Delta agent couldn’t tell me where it was.  It was supposed to be on another flight into LaGuardia that arrived at 7:03pm, but alas, there was no record of my bag being at LaGuardia at 9:30pm.

So talking to that manager, I basically asked her what the hell happened?  She told me the story of Birmingham, which basically means because some f**knut was too lazy to drag my bag in (because trust me, that airport was EMPTY this morning), my bag didn’t make my plane.  So she said “Delta sent it on the same route you went on earlier”…but unless I have severe amnesia, I don’t remember flying through Cincinnati today.  In fact, I haven’t flown through Cincinnati in a good 3 or 4 years.  So how they thought Cincinnati was on my route today is freaking beyond me.  Alas, my bag made it to Cincinnati, but apparently those f**knuts can’t put my bag on a plane either…because my bag is now unaccounted for, somewhere in plane land.

I don’t know about you, but this knowledge that my bag is out there, unaccounted for, makes me real damn leery, and makes me really question what exactly TSA is doing, because apparently it’s not keeping track of luggage.

As a final twist to this wonderful story, at 9:30pm tonight as I bitch to the manager about how completely unacceptable I find this whole thing of “We don’t really know where your bag is and can’t give you information”, she decides to inform me that based on my parents address in Connecticut, the bag delivery people at LaGuardia have every right to refuse to bring my bag to my parents house, if they deem it too far away.  If they do, they’ll forward the bag to the closest airport to my parents (White Plains) and then it’ll be White Plains’s responsibility to schedule bag delivery, which, of course, could further delay it.  To which I told her “Gosh, I find it really nice that you are the first person of 4 that I’ve spoken to to point out this little fact to me.”

So I’m in borrow nightclothes from my mom, had to go to Wal-Mart to buy new underwear and a t-shirt to wear tomorrow (shit, I forgot socks!), and am dipping into Mom’s toiletry stock so I can brush my teeth.

All I want is an answer to where my damn bag is.