LAX to Inchon, the never ending battle

Alright folks I know that there is much more info that happened before this that I want to share I just don't have it transcribed yet. But this has to be the most mindboggling part of the trip anyway so here you go.

PS- I'm probably going to post pics in about a week so that I don't have to install my camera software on every computer I run in to. Definitely worth waiting for!

And now on with the show!

So much to tell and I have been so long in the telling. Well I suppose that the best way to start is to jump in after I arrived in LA after Denver. When I got off the plane I figured that I should follow the card that I got and head over to the international terminal. I walked in the door and the place was a zoo, rush hour traffic at every counter and in the isles. Despite it being a HUGE terminal there was pretty much a one way walking path between the counters. When I got there (1.5 hr to take off) I got in line for Asiana Airlines and get things together, when I talked to the ticketing agent he pretty much shut me down and said that I didn’t have a ticket and I needed to go back to United to get one from them. I told him the ticket was attached to the pass but he said that was my ticket to DENVER!

So I took a 15 min. bus ride to the United counter at which point I was shut down yet again by the ticketing agent for United who was all about the line. Well by now I have an hour until take off and I realize that I have NO idea where Stella, my cat, is and more than likely I was going to miss my second flight for the day. So I go out into the general area for United and look for anybody who could help. Thank God I found another ticketing person that was willing to help. She tried really hard to get things cleared up and said I should just run over to Asiana with the boarding pass and get on the plane. So I made the 10 min. bus ride to the International terminal and tried to catch the flight, to no avail. Upon walking in to the terminal this time the place was a ghost town. The only people now were the ones that worked there. A marked contrast to an hour and a half ago! The ticket was still so messed up that Asiana wanted to charge me another $350 to take the cats and my extra luggage, which I might add I had no idea where it was but I knew it wasn’t in LA, to Inchon. It seems that they had the misguided belief that I should pay them for luggage even though my tickets and flights originated with United. Yeah I can not explain on paper how truly confusing this part of the journey was. Well the ticketing agent pretty much said that with 20 min. until take off there was no way I was making the flight. But they would try to get me on the midnight flight.

Well little old me in my ever so I’m helpless way began to talk with the only other person in the line and found out that he had missed the same flight and was on his way to Osan Army Base. He was pretty much in the same boat as I was so we paled around for the rest of the afternoon which was ever so helpful since I now had two cats and a large carry on.

During the 12 hour interim of missing the first flight and taking the second I was able to deal with the ticketing situation. When I went to ticketing the informed me that I had such a nasty little mess they were just going to send me directly to a supervisor and let them deal with it vs. having a representative from every department imaginable in the ticketing office. I agreed that this was a much better solution and headed of to terminal 7 to find May and Ron Kaplan, two if the most helpful people I met that day.

As they looked over my ticket and began to understand the complexity of the screw up that had occurred they simply offered me a lunch and dinner vouchers to go grab something to eat and rest up. (Mind you this simple maneuver also took 45 minutes.) So it was off to the boarding area with the cats, but the guy doing security wouldn’t let me through despite my possession of a security pass that said I WAS NOT boarding a plane merely eating. So once again a slightly ticked Ron Kaplan had to come to my rescue. Nice huh? Once there was food and caffeine in my system and a good hour or two had passed. I went back down to see Ron.

Ron had managed to find my luggage, it had stopped in San Francisco, was attempting to reroute it to Los Angeles, gotten the ticket reissued so I now in fact had a ticket from LAX to Inchon, and had given me the information on the “Star Alliance Agreement” which basically states that since I was booked though United the only rules I have to follow are United’s HA, HA! But of course we must keep things lively and there was the issue of the payment of my fees. Now it seems that Mr. Bahn in KC only charged me for domestic rates on 3 extra bags and 2 cats, thus totaling 420.00 smackers. But really what he should have charged me total was 650.00 dollars. Now just to make things a little dicer Asiana wanted to charge me 770.00 for all of this, no chance I’m going to be paying them that! But I did settle for paying the difference between the domestic United price and the international United price. I was just tired of dealing with all of this and figured it was what I should have paid anyway. So that pretty much cleared things up with the nightmare that was my ticket. Mr. Kaplan told me that I SOOOOO need to contact United and give them a piece of my mind and ask for some extra compensation, which I still need to do a week later, and told me not to worry about anything else.

Since all of this was done Gaston and I headed into LA after a stop at the USO, never been to one of them before nice set up, and just hung out. It was odd having so much time and really nothing to do or worry about. So we shot the breeze over a smoothie and then took a taxi back to the airport in time to get a free dinner, gotta love those vouchers, and check in to our flight. By now I was simply work out and was doing everything I could to stay awake until the flight took off.

It got even harder once we boarded the plane and I got all comfy. I did manage to stay awake until take off and then I was O-U-T! I do remember hearing people at dinner and them passing out all sorts of papers. Nothing was coming in the way of my sleep though. I woke up around 3AM airplane time, by now I have NO clue what time it is in LA or the rest of the world for that matter, ready to face a new day. Can I just tell you I am so very glad, and highly recommend, sleeping through long flights. Without that option I swear I would have gone crazy. Crystal was not happy after being crammed in a bag the size of a large shoe box for 24 hours and was finally letting me know by meowing at regular intervals.

Once of the place customs seemed pretty low key, or maybe that was because I had no clue what they were saying to me. But I picked up my bags, note the funny pic of Gaston and the bag that is not ours when you see my photosJ, and they took me through “quarantine” with the cats. At first the women there took the cat’s rabies verification and told me to just sign a paper for quarantine and that was it. I assumed that this meant that the cats had not passed and were now being detained so I freaked out and asked her why I had to sign it and how long she was going to keep the cats. To which her reply was 10 minutes. Oh okay so about then I figure out that she hasn’t inspected them yet and that’s pretty much all they have to do. So I pull out Crystal and she gives her a once over and says she is fine. Next I begin to pull out Stella and about half way into the process of getting her out the woman goes, “Ohhh, yes, she’s healthy!” HA, HA so the fat cat had no problems either.

From here it was simply a matter of dragging 2 FULL luggage carts through the exit and I was in Korea! Just like that. From here I said goodbye to Gaston, he was taking a bus to Osan, and met up with some new friends Helen and Mrs. Jung. I’m interested to see if Gaston tries to keep in touch I pretty much left it up to him. Boys will be boys.