Airlines and cave diving---Aaargh!!!

[mk706]

Plenty of worse places to have luggage delayed. At least you can borrow/rent any necessary kit from CA. I carry all sensitive items in carry on, including lights, regs, computers, and primary mask. Anything else can be rented.

John Weston is always tinkering with the SMS75. Mine gets tweaked every pass through Marianna - about monthly. I've been happy with it for a while, but he always has some new adaptation to try.

I really like the Contour, and may pick one up in the spring.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[bradells]

This is just a bit of a frustrated rant--hope you don't mind.

I worked with a student on Advanced Nitrox and Deco Procedures last year. She was already full cave, with 100% of her experience being in Mexico. She done her cave training in sidemount, and she had just gotten a new Hollis SMS 75. I had jsut gotten the same thing, but it was not exactly the same as the prototype on which I had trained the year before, and not having a lot of sidemount dives myself, I was unsure about the best way to use it. Some minor issues had me puzzled. She was also very interested in explaining he cave background to include colder water systems.

I go to Florida every winter, and it seemed like the perfect way to help her out. My wife and I would stop in Marianna for a couple of days, and she would fly in to meet us for two days. She and I would dive, and we would get the latest in SMS tutelage from the best possible source. I arrived yesterday in the afternoon. I went to the shop, and john tore my whole system apart and set it up the way it should be. I am ready to go. My buddy arrived in Tallahassee last night, right on time. Perfect so far.

He luggage is in Dallas.

She has nearly no dive gear with her. It will not get here until late this afternoon. She has the airline's apology, but that's it. We will head over to see what we can salvage from today's plans.

Its not just cave diving ... its any time you need your luggage to be there.


This current trip in Belize, Airline oversold the first leg, waiting for an hour after departure time to leave (whole plane boarded, door closed) for bags to be put on/removed, causing everyone at the connection to not have bags when they arrive.

Took 2 days ....

Trip prior to Honduras, Lots of time to get bags where they should go on the connection. One of my dive bags (drysuit, fins, and somehow the OPV for my wing from the other bag) went on a global round trip across North and South America to go from Houston to Roatan.... The other bag made the shorter flight, along with me ... 5 days later, they showed up.


I can fit all my 'travel' stuff on carryon, along with regs/medium camera rig. The checked bags are obtainable dive gear wherever I'm going (ok, maybe not BPW), even if it doesn't.


BRad

 

[boulderjohn]

Plenty of worse places to have luggage delayed. At least you can borrow/rent any necessary kit from CA.

You can rent SOME of the necessary kit from CA, but not all. They could not give her any thermal protection.

Next update:

The supposed 10:00 pickup last night did not happen. She contacted the delivery company, and they said her luggage was not on the schedule. Right now no one knows where it is.

 

[dreamdive]

You can rent SOME of the necessary kit from CA, but not all. They could not give her any thermal protection.

Next update:

The supposed 10:00 pickup last night did not happen. She contacted the delivery company, and they said her luggage was not on the schedule. Right now no one knows where it is.

That is so frustrating! I feel bad for you and her! Hope she gets her bag very soon

 

[boulderjohn]

Not only did the delivery company not have her on the schedule, they said they had no ability to call the airlines to find out why. Apparently American Airlines does not have the ability to make a call out of the airport--which makes no sense to me. So when they have to call the trucking company to deliver lost luggage, whoever is on duty makes the call from a personal phone. The trucking company therefore has no number within the airport to call for occasions like this. At least that is what they told her.

She called the airline herself directly, something the trucking company is apparently unable to do. She got a confirmation of the location of her luggage. She will drive to the airport herself and pick it up. The whole trip will take several hours. We will miss the planned dives this morning, but we will hopefully get in one decent dive this afternoon.

BTW, she is an attorney, and plans for the future are running through her mind right now.

 

[dmoore19]

Wait for a day or 2. When you get your bags back, you will still be getting robo calls telling you that they are still working on getting your bags to you. That is what happened to me. I got my lost bags returned and it took 5 days of calling them to get the robo calls to stop. Every morning around 6AM I got a robo call telling me that they were diligently working to find my bags and return them to me.

 

[KeithG]

venting helps. so does backup plans.

as already noted, i am amazed that the airlines regularly manage to properly deliver an extremely high volume of luggage. they get 1 thumbs up for that.

i am also amazed at how badly they screw up when luggage goes missing. they do not seem to have any ability to deal with lost luggage in a sensible fashion. 2 thumbs down.

on 1 return trip our plane was overloaded with passengers and luggage. the airline was able to slide some other passengers onto a partner airline flight travelling to the same destination but 1 hour later. we arrive via the original flight, no bags. stand in line to complain. good news, they are not lost, it is on the other plane. great, all we have to do is wait 1 hour. sorry sir that is not possible. the other flight arrives in a different terminal. the baggage claim is in a secure area. we can not enter it. there is no airport procedure to get our bags to us standing just outside the secure barrier. it must be handled as lost luggage. they arrived home 2 days later. we live about 10 miles from the airport.

for backup plans we now carry full time trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance. this does not get you or your bags there, but it does make you feel a little bit better afterwards if you can recoup surprise exspenses. in this case it should have covered some (much, all?) of the extra out of pocket costs for the hotel accomodation.

p.s. the headline was a little misleading. it conjured up images of a plane jammed into a cave full of water. set my mind to wondering how the plane got there in the first place.

 

[adurso]

Oddly enough the only luggage problems we have encountered so far are TSA either stealing cameras, or breaking expensive lights, apparently in an attempt to determine if the batteries were explosive...

 

[KeithG]

Oddly enough the only luggage problems we have encountered so far are TSA either stealing cameras, or breaking expensive lights, apparently in an attempt to determine if the batteries were explosive...

this makes me feel better. all the TSA has done to us is to break a bunch of TSA approved locks.

 

[dmoore19]

As noted above, the airlines do a reasonable job of getting people and luggage to the right place at the same time. They do a horrible job of implementing a plan when things go differently. Now, let me go find that thread where some are talking about some dude named Taleb and see if I can make some sense of this.