Why is nothing ever easy or simple? Is it because we are the Griswolds?
We made our air arrangements several months ago, picking a flight on British Air from Newark to London because it was affordable, convenient, and an airport that was a change of pace. We also opted to fly to Newark the day before, just in case. Little did we know!
A week ago, our good friend Rob, warned us about the complete mess going on at the Newark airport. We checked and found out that the situation was even worse than we expected. Not enough air traffic controllers and other staff, multiple flight cancellations, just a total shit show. And it continued each day. We kept telling ourselves that surely they would be back to normal by the time we left, but oh hell no! As time went by, we worried a little more and yesterday, the day before our scheduled departure, Brian planned an alternative. It would only take 13 hours to drive from Jacksonville to Newark, and we could get a one way car rental for $86 and no drop charge. Stress relief!
However, about 10 pm, last night, we got a text from the FAA warning us that the mess in Newark was so bad that we could opt to either cancel with a full refund or change flights; either way - no penalty. This only applied to the United flight from Jax to EWR. That’s when we got the brilliant idea to simply change the tickets to somewhere closer to New Jersey before we rented the car. Then it hit me that before we made that change we should see if we could move the London flight to the same city. I tried to change it on line but couldn’t. I called the airline and found out that they were not under the FAA warning so it would cost us a huge amount to change to any other city. They recommended that we keep our current reservation out of Newark. Washington DC was the closest United could get us at a reasonable time, but American could get us into Philadelphia, just a short 2 hour drive.
By this time it was about 1 am. We booked the same day American flight, cancelled and got a full refund from United which was actually a little more than the new tickets cost. Great shape, right?
Wrong! That’s when we discovered that any car rental company we could find would charge us at least $250 for a 2 hour drive, because they all had drop charges!
No problem we said- let’s take the train. Just a 1 hour train ride, and a short Uber ride from the airport to the train station. Like I said, nothing is ever simple. Now we wait to find out if the London flight out of Newark tomorrow will get an FAA warning, in which case we will spend tonight looking for an alternative.
We had planned to spend the afternoon at a mall and theater next to the Hampton Inn hotel, but it was so too late when we got there.
And the kicker to all this? Our original flight out of Jacksonville wasn’t cancelled after all. Good grief!
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