What is it about traveling to Chicago?

I flew into Chicago from San Francisco last night. I'm spending a couple of weeks with my friend Rob. Since being in the States I have only had a few days with him and its time that I got around to spending more time with him.

Some may remember when Adam and I arrived in San Francisco on October 7 last year and both our luggage didn't arrive, well 11 months later I'm going down that same road again. Oh the torture of it all. At least I wasn't the only one. There were a number of people from my flight and a lot more from a flight that came in from Dallas. In additon to this, when i first arrived into the States and flew from NYC to Chicago, I then too had travel issues with being left on the curbside for two hours because the shuttle bus was in an accident and noone form the company bothered to ring me to tell me, or when i rang them the three times to find out where it was I was told it would be there in five minutes. There is something about me coming to this city. Am I not meant to be here???

I left from Oakland airport and flew to Seattle to get a connecting flight to Chicago. Yes it is a long way of getting to Chicago, but half the price and I have time on my hands. My layover in Seattle was 1.5 hours before my next flight. My luggage was checked all the way through from Oakland to Seattle, so I didn't have to worry about baggage claim and re-checking. One would think that 1.5 hours was plenty of time for the baggage handlers to get a bag from one plane to the next. Obviously not as history would show when Adam and I had a three hour layover in Honolulu and our bags still didn't make the flight and we had claimed and rechecked our bags in ourselves. I arrived into Chicago at 9.40pm, and by the time I realised that there was no luggage coming my way there was a line up at Baggage Services from all the othere happy campers whos's bags had gone astray. In the confusion of it all I could hear some of the situations that had gone on. One couples bags made it onto and earlier flight and were on a continual round-a-bout pattern on a different carosel. A number of others had there bags seized by security and were being held waiting for collection by the owners. There was a lady, who wasn't on my flight, who arrived in from somewhere via Dallas at 8.30pm. She had been told by baggage services that her bags were on the next flight. She had been told this for two hours with a flight coming in from Dallas every half hour. She was almost in tears, and again she was told he bags could be on the next flight in which was due at 11pm. She had a work function first thing in the morning an the outfit she was required to wear was in that bag. She like the rest of us checked in a 'carry on' sized bags because of our toiletries and now we had nothing. The reason for my bag being missing was ziltch. They couldn't even tell me if it even left Oakland airport. I dont get it. The wack on these big stickers with a barcode that matches the bag receipt stuck to the envelope that your boarding pass comes in, yet nothing is tracked using that barcode. Can someone explain to me what it is there for and why the airlines dont track our bags? How do they then do they locate bags on a plane to remove it if a passenger isn't on the flight? I just dont get the system. The annoying thing is that I only checked my luggage because of my contacts solution. Everything else I could have used of Robs, but I didn't want to have to go out and buy more solution, and particularly since Rob and I are flying to Cleavland as well. That would have meant I would have had to buy another lot of solution once we got there. As it happens I was wearing my contacts on the plane and therefore we had to find a Pharmacy that was opened at 11pm out in the burbs so that I could now buy contact solution and another casing to hold the contacts while soaking in the solution.

So today I'm spending the day in Robs pants. Sounds so naughty when I say that, but all it is is that I'm walking aroud his house, while he is at work, in a pair of his boxes until my bag arrives. I called the airline at 9.30pm this morning and spoke to one of those customer focused automated systems where to locate your record it asks what airport you arrived at and then what is your surname. Trying to get across to a automated service the surname of JUX isn't that easy, and it just keeps going around in a loop. But after awhile it got it probably becuase it went through the entire list of J's. Funnily enough it couldn't repeat my name back to me, it had to spell it. My bag had been located and was being picked up by the dispatcher at 11am and would be delivered within SIX hours.

In there defense, with the new security requirements I'm sure the baggage handling systems weren't ready for the massive increase in checked luggage. Its probably doubled if not trippled the amount of bags going through the system. But what they need to do is to communicate and track our bags an tell us where they are.