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Published: September 10th 2009
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At Hotel Sol de Oro's restaurant: Asparragus soup.Early Tuesday 09/01/09 we showed up at the airport on time to check-in, go through security, and wait for the flight to depart. When we got to LAN’s counter, we were told that our 10:40am flight had been discontinued more than THREE MONTHS AGO. Simple question: When were they planning on letting us know? The counter lady said that because we hadn’t provided a Lima phone number at the time of our on-line ticket purchase, LAN didn’t have a way to get in touch with us. I then pointed out the obvious: They had my e-mail address, which I had provided at the time of the purchase and where LAN had sent the ticket confirmations. Besides, e-mail is accessible from anywhere in the world and why, oh why, hadn’t we been told of the flight cancellation when we were at the LAN counter at JFK? It was like asking a cat why it doesn’t bark. Ben asked that we be put in business class. The counter lady said it was full. Ben later said “That business class better be packed when we get on that airplane!”
Utterly annoyed, we got complaint forms from the counter lady. She then booked us
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Mixed salad on the 12:20am (Wednesday morning 09/02/09) flight and offered to put us up at a hotel near the airport. Well, the counter lady hadn’t even finished offering this when she got a big “No” from me; you don’t want to stay at a hotel near the airport, trust me. So she offered one in Miraflores (Sol de Oro, five stars—OK, we’ll take that), transportation from and back to the airport, and three meals at the hotel.
We got to the hotel, checked-in, had breakfast (The concierge first told us that they weren’t serving breakfast anymore; that they could give us breakfast the next day. Oh no, we wanted breakfast right there and then; it turned out that breakfast was buffet-style, no “serving" was involved. Hmmmmm!), and went to the room to get some rest. I e-mailed work (I’d have to take an extra day off) and Cathy’s Dad to let them know of the delay and made a quick call to my sister in Miami. We pretty much spent the day napping, eating, and playing video games (Cathy). The taxi came at 8pm.
We got to the airport, dropped the complaint forms at the LAN counter—we were told
we would hear from LAN within 48 hours—and headed over to security and the gate. No tools were confiscated this time. We got on the plane and, lo and behold, business class was ½ full. The LAN counter lady had lied to us. We explained to one of the flight attendants the whole flight cancellation fiasco and that we had been told that business class was full but, in fact, was not. He said that he couldn’t move us to business class as they had already received the manifest from the ground crew. Oh well; things not always go your way, right?
Our flight to Miami was uneventful; they did feed us dinner, and pretty soon, we were landing in Miami. The United counter wouldn’t open until 11am, so we had to load up our 12 pieces of luggage on my sister’s van and go get breakfast.
We found a place where we could eat outside so that we could keep an eye on the van, which had three of our suitcases on top. We had a quick two-hour visit; it was good to see my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew again.
We got back to the airport
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Lomo saltado on time to check-in and get to the gate. We were then told that, because we were added at the last minute in Lima, we were being bumped to another flight, departing two hours later. We eventually got home in Sterling, Virginia, past 8pm on Wednesday 09/02/09, almost 24 hours later than expected. We were tired and just wanted a shower and a bite to eat before heading to bed. Luckily, no school or work the next day (at least not for Cathy and me; Ben had to see some clients Thursday afternoon).
Woohoo!!!! We were back to the daily grind. As far as food goes, IHOP anyone? Urghhhhh! Queremos cebiche!
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