The no show

In “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” John Denver warbles movingly about the evils of being an internationally-acclaimed musician whose main squeeze is much less mobile. As with all John Denver songs, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” is subject to various spoofing issues (although Peter, Paul, and Mary did an OK job with it), as in the highly amusing scene in Armageddon in which the drill crew qua astronauts do an a capella rendition before boarding space shuttles, thus demonstrating their lack of aerospace knowledge. In fact, one character remarks that the safety of the world is in the hands of a bunch of men he wouldn’t trust with a potato gun.

(Right) An early jet. Probably not ever boarded by John Denver. Image by WyrdLight http://www.wyrdlight.com and distributed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.

…which got me to thinkin’… who would I trust with my safety—or a potato gun?

Not Surly Airline Lady, an unfortunate (and no doubt underpaid) person who tried very hard to leave me stranded in Florida at the site of the Giant Cockroach and the Closet Lizards.

Why, you may ask, should I have been stranded? The answer is simple—two airline tickets had been paid for on my behalf.

To my mind, if you buy an airline ticket for a flight and then your company (or other sponsoring organization) buys you another ticket, you call the airline and they reassign one ticket. That sounds simple. So, I called, and Nice (but possibly not terribly computer savvy) Airline Man said everything would be great, and it was, but then I had to change the return date. This reactivated all the tickets. Normally, the airline people should tell you when you have two seats, but they just crossed out the duplicate name and sold the seat again.

Oopsies!!

(Left) Toy Potato Gun. Image by Richard Wheeler 2007. Used under gnu license (link below).

Then, because I did not show up for my flight to Florida—although technically I was on the flight because of the other ticket—when I tried to check in via phone the day of my return flight, Surly Airline Lady told me that I was a “no show” so I would have to buy a third ticket costing as much as the first two tickets combined in order to get home.

Needless to say, I was unhappy. I pointed out that this policy seemed ridiculously advantageous to the airline, particularly since I had been on the outgoing flight and she was withholding my return on a technicality. Wasn’t it illegal to sell two tickets to the same person for the same flight? Let alone to demand payment a third time?

Surly Airline Lady was having none of my so-called “logic” or "business ethics” chat. Who did I think I was, a paying customer? Yeesh! I was a "no show," which is apparently a category of people somewhat less trustworthy than Ghengis Khan, the Unibomber and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Luckily, someone at the hotel told me to show up at the airport with the tickets and they would have to put me on a plane. If not, I was supposed to cry.

(Image of an airline ticket or "flugschein" by Matthias Sebulke, released into the public domain)

The airport people, who had already had a terrible day, put me on the next plane before I could even sniffle. The gate area was full of extremely surly (if not aggressive) people who had been delayed for 7 to 14 hours because of weather—people flying back to certain major metropolitan areas from Florida are not pleasant in their reactions to delay. In fact, despite my high level of crankiness, I was actually nicer than the other passengers and the airport people looked in the computer and told me the correct secret code words to use to get my old ticket back.

The next day, I called the airline to explain. They seemed unmoved until I pointed out that I felt a bit distrustful of my personal safety among a group of people who couldn't figure out how to handle a duplicate ticket. How would she feel?

I got back a flight and double sky miles.

...which brings me back to trusting someone with a potato gun....how's about this baby?

(image of potato gun by Scott VanPala used under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)