How to kill the travel industry.

Richard and I booked our flights to Europe back in January. It is really a simple itinerary. We fly from Portland, Oregon to Amsterdam, Netherlands and catch a connecting flight to Prague, Czech Republic. The return trip is stunning in its variety. We fly from Prague, Czech Republic to Amsterdam, Netherlands and catch connecting flight to Portland, Oregon.

We both thought all was okey-dokey. We couldn’t get our seat assignments at the time we bought our tickets, but we were careful to note the date we could get them. On that date we went online and, well, we could get seat assignment on our flight from Portland to Amsterdam, our flight from Amsterdam to Prague was still a free-for-all, the return flight from Prague to Amsterdam wasn’t even listed yet and we were 14 days early to get our seats from Amsterdam to Portland. That’s fine. No one ever said international travel was easy.

14 days later we were back on the internet. Our seats were confirmed on our 1st leg. The 2nd leg was still a chaos in motion, the 3rd leg still didn’t exist and the 4th leg let us get seat assignments. Lordy, this is moving so smoothly!

Fast forward to last Friday. We still have seats on both directions that involve Portland and Amsterdam. The flight from Amsterdam to Prague is still a calamity waiting to happen and the return flight to Amsterdam doesn’t exist. But when we went to Travelocity’s website (yes, we bought out tickets though them), all four legs of our flight were listed as they should be. I, of course, was cool a cucumber, but Richard wanted action. So, I sent Travelocity the following email:

“Portion of flight missing from airline websites.

Our reservations are Portland to Amsterdam and on to Prague, with the return being the opposite. On Travelocity's website that is listed, but when I go to the website of the airlines involved (KLM, Delta and Czech) the return leg from Prague to Amsterdam is missing. What should I do?”

(Note: I did have to give them pertinent information like booking number, confirmation number, license number, mother’s maiden name, shortest sister’s social security number and a random bank account with the access code before they would let me send them an email.)

We received an email back six hours later saying (and I paraphrase), “Call us, you noodle-nosed loser, at 888-xxx-xxxx.” Turns out they gave me the wrong number. The correct number is 666-xxx-xxxx.

So Saturday, I called. The guy I talked with (I couldn’t understand his name) said that they couldn’t tell me what was going on, but there was bad weather in Prague so the flight had been postponed and could I call back in 24 hours. It was a stretch, but I also knew I was going nowhere fast with this call.

Sunday I forgot to call back, so today I did. An hour later, all I can tell you is the flight we’re booked on no longer exists, there are only a hand few of ways to get from Prague to Portland (most of them include hitchhiking), and the people in the travel industry really, really don’t care.

Oh, and the ‘airline’ is only open from 9am to 7:30pm Central Time, and it was 7:41 Central Time (after an hour on the phone) so there was nothing we could do. I have to call back tomorrow.