JFK airport = land of hell

Sooooo.......happy new year! I spent the first 3 days of 2006 stranded at JFK. My Jet Blue flight got in to JFK late on Monday, so I missed my flight to Brussels, and then spent the next 2.5 days crying to every airport official that would listen. I actually almost made the Brussels flight on Monday night, because I cried hysterically to a nice, incredibly New York police man was like "okay, i'll make some phone calls for you" and started calling all the American Airlines officials! He rushes me past security, with my two huge suitcases that I wanted to check, but didn't have the chance, and then we run down to the gate, but I JUST missed the flight. The plane was still there, but they had just "closed the door" or some nonsense like that. LAME. So Jet Blue put me up for the night at a hotel, then the next day I came back to the airport, was put on stand-by for the 6 pm flight to Brussels (same one I had originally missed), but didn't get on because the flight was oversold by 20.

Meanwhile, there were like 8000 other American Airlines flights going out to various European destinations, but since my plane ticket was actually held by SN Brussels Air (a partner of AA), I couldn't take any flight except an SN flight, and there was only that one SN flight per day (SN doesn't even have a ticket counter at JFK, so I couldn't even go plead my case to them!) Awesome beauracracy stuff. So after convincing Jet Blue to put me up for another night, because this was totally all their fault, I go back to the airport on Wednesday and am ready to take my totally confirmed, no way I'm not getting on flight. However, when I checked in, they didn't assign me a seat, and told me I was the first person the stand-by list. I flipped out. Of course, throughout all of this, my mom is placing a million phone calls for me, to Travelocity, SN Brussels Air, American Airlines, but nothing is working. So I end up going back out to the AA ticket counter, talking to a supervisor, who checks on a computer and is like "Yes, you have a seat tonight, here's your ticket." I somehow got off the stand-by list (don't ask me how), and got a seat. Yay!

Then, of course, our flight was delayed 5 hours and I missed my connection in Brussels. They gave me a new connection through Amsterdam when we were still in JFK, then our flight got delayed again, so I would have missed the new connection too. Then they gave me another (very tight) connection through Frankfurt, and a back-up direct flight to Toulouse that wouldn't have gotten me in until 10 pm! P.S. I don't know where any of my bags are throughout this whole ordeal, I hadn't seen them since Tuesday at noon when I put them through security to be put on stand-by. Anyway, all this fun had to end sometime, so we finally leave JFK, get to Brussels, I easily make the connection to Frankfurt, and then arrive in Toulouse at 6 pm Thursday. Through some miracle, one of my bags was actually on the Lufthansa flight with me! I picked it up right at baggage claim. The other bag had apparently gotten on the standby flight that I didn't get on, and was at baggage services waiting for me. And Annie Donovan was there waiting for me at the airport as a surprise and I love her a lot!

The end. That saga is complete.