In-house ACCess : In-house ACCess: Association of Corporate Counsel : ACC : The In-house Counsel Bar Association

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Armed with my Italian sourced flight data, I approached the gate agent and explained that going to Chicago that evening seemed pointless; I needed to be rebooked for a departure next evening. He agreed and began the rebooking process only to come to a sudden stop. Exasperated he said there was a bit of problem—he could not get us into Torino until January 30^th. Wait he said, I have an option. You fly from Cleveland to Chicago, Chicago to Washington Reagan, Reagan to Kennedy, Kennedy to Rio, Rio to a location Eastern Europe I fail to recall now, and from there to Torino.

I quickly responded that that appeared to be a theoretical option—not a practical one. He agreed. How about Milan I asked. That turned out to be an easy alternative and was only slightly further from our destination of Alba than Torino. However, the agent was rather persistent in suggesting that we take the 7:30 AM flight to Chicago rather than the many other options later in the day. We kept explaining that friends were taking us to the airport and it was hard to justify asking them to get up in the middle of the night to get us to the airport—particularly since they were had already brought us here and were going to have to pick us up.

The agent finally decided to put us up at the airport hotel and pay for dinner so we could take the 7:30 AM flight. He seemed convinced that none of the 3 or 4 other options later in the day were safe connections. Even in retrospect his concern seems to be a bit paranoid, but his solution limited additional burdens on our friends so we were happy to comply.

So, on the day we should have been arriving in Italy we were starting our journey. As our plane accelerated down the runway my wife expressed a sigh of relief, finally we are going to get there she said. As a seasoned traveler my autonomic response was: “We are not there yet.” The statement was a premonition of what was to come.

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 (Read Part 1)

With the location of Christmas settled, plans were made for arrivals. My wife and I would depart from Cleveland in the evening on December 20^th arriving in Torino (Turin) Italy in the late afternoon of December 21^st. Our oldest son would arrive from China in Torino. This would give us two days before Christmas and my son in China had arranged for us to meet many of his friends during that period. But that was not to be.

When we arrived at the airport in Cleveland, many feelings returned from my days as a traveling lawyer. I was Infinite Elite Platinum on Continental, so I had spent many hours in airports and planes. I had forgotten in the last three years since I retired that this was a rather taxing experience. Suddenly our phone rang; it was our son calling VOIP from Italy. He asked whether we knew that our plane to Chicago which was in Dulles had its departure delayed due to the snow storm that had battered the east coast. I did not, but I would ask the gate agent, who was not aware of the delay and had not updated the departure board. I could not miss the irony that I was better informed than an airline employee due to information I was getting from Italy.

Those of you who travel a lot will recognize that airlines typically post extremely optimistic estimated departure times which are gradually revised to much later realistic times. This may be a result of a lack of information, but I often suspected that it was designed to discourage passengers from looking into switching to another carrier.

Of course, the departure time of our flight to Chicago was finally revised to a time that dashed any hope that we would connect with our Lufthansa flight to Munich. When it became clear that the United agent still expected that we would all still be going to Chicago, my Italian source of flight data pointed out it would be pointless, because there were no flights to get me to Italy until the next night.

 Read Part 1 of Larry's holiday travel experiences.

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