After a fairly stressful morning in Chicago I was in the air and on my way to Charlotte. I had already talked to American via Twitter to let them know about my delay and they thankfully backed me up on a flight from Charlotte to LaGuardia. While not quite JFK, I was happy to have a backup flight to New York which, if on time, would get me to my later flight to London.
The flight to Charlotte was scheduled to arrive in Charlotte at approximately 2:00PM and my backup flight to LaGuardia was scheduled to depart at 2:20PM. That only left about 10 minutes to connect assuming we disembarked the aircraft at 2PM. Given the way things were going earlier this morning I assumed I would also be missing my flight to LaGuardia and would have to come up with alternatives. Until that happened though I tried to pretend as if everything was fine. After all, ignorance is bliss.
A Gift From The Airline Gods
If you’ve ever connected in Charlotte before you know that Charlotte airport is a nightmare. To get from one set of gates to another takes a lot of time and you’re fighting crowds the whole way.
Because I had such a short connection (10 minutes) I figured there would be no way that I could make it to the New York gate on time. Things looked even worse when I logged into the American Airlines app and noticed the assigned gates associated with my flights.
My arrival flight was set to arrive at gate B10 while my departing gate showed on the app as C12! Since getting from the B gates to the C gates at Charlotte takes some time I sat back and accepted the fact that I would not be making my flight to London. I began to search for award flights on various carriers to see if I could at least make it to Munich by Saturday evening.
Then, to my surprise, the flight attendant (Chris, who was the best FA I’ve had on American) made another announcement. This time he announced that we had been assigned a new gate and that our new gate was C10. Yep, that’s right, our arrival gate was C10 and my departure gate was C12! I honestly still can’t believe my luck.
As I left the JetBridge I had just a second walk to my departure gate where passengers were still boarding. I then lined up in front of the gate agent who shortly thereafter handed me my boarding card for the flight. American’s Twitter team hooked me up with an assigned seat rather than putting my on standby; Thank again American!
Arriving At LaGuardia And Visiting The Amex Centurion Lounge
While I secretly hoped that our flight would somehow be diverted to JFK the whole flight, I was still very relived when we landed in LaGuardia. At this point it was approximately 2PM CST and I had yet to have a proper meal. So, I did what anyone in a rush to get to JFK would do, I stopped at the American Express Centurion Lounge for a bite to eat and a drink!
One of the benefit of traveling to/from LaGuardia is having access to the overcrowded American Express Centurion Lounge. The lounge is quite small and doesn’t have enough seats to accommodate the swam of guests who visit the lounge daily, but it does offer fantastic food.
During my visit I treated myself to a plate of ginger rice, stir friend vegetables, and beaded chicken. As always the food was fantastic, as was the glass of sparking wine and cappuccino. After my hearty meal I finally had enough brain power to figure out how to get from LGA to JFK.
Lyft Ride From LGA To JFK
I was under the impression that were was a convenient shuttle from LGA to JFK, but I couldn’t find one for the life of me. After walking around the airport aimlessly for about 20 minutes I decided simply to take a cab. I first launched the Uber app where I was quoted $55 for a ride from LGA to JFK. Next, I launched the Lyft app where the same ride cost just $35. I’m not sure what a normal cab would cost, but I imagined it would be more than $35 so I requested a ride.
I’m currently siting in the back of said Lyft on my way to JFK airport. The Lyft is scheduled to arrive at JFK by 6PM and my flight to London departs at 7PM. That gives me an hour which is not nearly the 5 hour layover I originally had planned on.
No JFK Lounge Reviews
While most travelers would view a shorter layover as a positive, I’m personally a bit bummed. I had hoped to spend quite a bit of time in the New York (JFK) Flagship Lounge before my flight. I visited the lounge a few weeks ago, but decided not to “review” it then as I was exhausted and knew I would be back just a few weeks later. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to review that lounge during this trip either.
In fact, I don’t think I’ll have enough time to review the New York (JFK) British Airways Galleries First lounge either. I am flying British Airways to London and was hoping to review that lounge in Terminal 7 prior to boarding my flight. Sadly, it seems I’ll only have enough time to pop in, grab a drink, and head out. I don’t even think I’ll have enough time for a pre-flight shower!
I Am Incredibly Lucky
I’ve said this before on this blog, but I really am lucky. For how much I travel I find that things tend to always work out. Today, I thought my luck had run out. The long-delayed in Chicago almost caused me to miss any hope of getting to New York with American. I was terrified that when I landed in Charlotte I would need to shell out $450+ to fly Delta to LaGuardia and take a cab. Even it that option worked out, I was going to miss my flight to London and still risked losing any hope of getting to Munich in time to begin my Finnair trip.
Yet again, somehow, things seem to be working out. Yes, sure I’m not at JFK yet, nor am I sitting in my seat on the British Airways 747-400, but things are looking good.
Today has served as a welcomed reminder of what can go wrong when booking trips using multiple itineraries. If I had booked all of this on one PNR I would not have to worry about misconnecting. In that case the airline would find a way to get me to where I needed to go. In this case however, I’m completely on my own. If I had missed my departure to London the airline would have no requirement to take care of me. Had all of this been on one record locater, they would.
Final Thoughts
What a day! As I mentioned with this Mileage Run I’m going to try to “Live Blog” the experience. That means posting at various points throughout the trip about what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, and what is going on along the way. With that I suspect these posts might not be as clear/concise as other trip reports, but I hope they are still readable and most importantly, enjoyable.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what I did on the flights from Chicago to Charlotte and onto New York, I read, wrote, and watched The Greatest Showman (which was great).
