20 July 2007

Using Jedi Mind Control to convince the computer to get tickets on mileage

Posted by BaBa under: Preparations; Travel .

Yesterday, we finalized our tickets to get to China and back. We purchased Sheridan’s one way ticket directly from China Southern as Delta had no more space to sell on that plane with their code share seats. If they had space, we could have gotten a special adoption fare and this would have made things too easy.

Time for Jedi Mind Control to be used. We “forced” (play on words) the computer to get Sheridan home from LA on the same flights we were flying. Delta had award seats for us to fly on the 18th of August back from LA to New Orleans and then connect from New Orleans to Atlanta. The problem was that the computer wanted to charge 25,000 miles from LA to New Orleans and then another 25,000 miles from New Orleans to Atlanta. So we left the Delta office on Wednesday with tickets that had us going from LA directly to Atlanta arriving on midnight August 20th. This would be disastorous, but if it was required we would do it. I did not want to arrive after hanging out in a hotel in LA for 3 days, miss one more day of work and then on 4 hours sleep start teaching students I had never seen before.

I called on Thursday and spoke to an angel name Jackie in Salt Lake City with Delta. She thought that this was not good as well. She worked on applying her Jedi Skills to the computer in order to get him on the flights on the 18th from LA to New Orleans and then back to Atlanta. She issued him a ticket as a round trip with him going back to LA on the 25th of October. She “FORCED” the system into doing this to get him home for 25,000 miles. We have one additional year to use the one way portion back to LA. She told us to find a cheap one way fare next year from LA to ATL and use his one way open tix to go to Disneyland next summer.

She also waived any fees even though she knew her supervisor would not like this. However, she told him that she had already promised this and he did sign off on it. We just have to go to the ticket office today to get our tickets reissued.

I have made so many calls to Delta over the last week to work to get our tickets. I have run into many angels that work for the carrier and each was personable and spent a long time trying to get our tickets for us. The folks working on the partner desk for Delta are the best. Almost all of them went to the website to see his pictures and oooh and ahhed over him. Is it no wonder that his first official document we have gotten him is a DELTA SKYMILES CARD?

I would also be remiss if I did not mention Eric and Helen at the Lenox office who spent several hours to get the tickets issued. Eric even volunteered to give us 21,000 sky miles from his own account to get Sheridan home. Delta is our hometown airline and we are loyal passengers.

I also booked our tickets on China Southern from Guangzhou to Beijing. I found these tickets for half price online and so we are now set. Today I wait for the confirmation from JC-Travel for Sheridan’s tickets back to LAX and our e-tix from Guangzhou to Beijing.

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