On Tuesday morning, May 19, I was ready to leave my apartment, check out, and catch a flight to Dallas. The itinerary was honestly beautiful. PHX to DFW to NYC to DEL. Two short layovers, both around 40 minutes, and the whole thing got me from Tempe to India in about 24 hours. I was very proud of myself for finding this, which is usually a dangerous emotion to have around an airline itinerary.

The plan was to leave Tempe on the 19th and get to India on the 20th. The only sad part was that I had to give up my Qatar Airways Qsuite experience because of geopolitical things, which is a deeply first-world sentence and I am aware of that. But still, I had made peace with it. The shorter travel time made up for the worse first class experience.

Little did I know that this plan would be in shambles in no time. We got to the airport and I checked my bags in. Somewhere around this point, while I was busy being emotional and not useful, someone who actually pays attention to details noticed that my route was no longer through New York. It was now through London. I didn’t think much of this in the moment. I was going through my sad airport goodbye, meanwhile my airline was in the background quietly turning my itinerary into a group project from hell.

I get to the gate and the flight to Dallas gets delayed by 30 minutes. Then another hour. Around 40 minutes after the original departure time, it is very obvious I am not making my Dallas connection. So I get rebooked. Then there is another delay, and another rebooking. Departure moves from 10:05 am to 12:30 pm. Then they rebook me through Qatar: DFW to Doha to Delhi. Great. Full circle. Maybe the Qsuite dream was alive again.

We boarded the plane. The new departure time became 1:15 PM.

At 1:40 PM, we got deplaned.

There is a specific humiliation in getting on a plane, putting your bag away, settling into your seat, having a drink, convincing yourself that things are finally moving, and then being told to leave the plane.

At some point, I was done with their shit. I used my incredible pattern recognition skills and concluded that more delays were obviously coming. So I left to get coffee and maybe go to the lounge. Unfortunately, the pattern was not delays. The pattern was unpredictability - the airline doing the exact opposite of whatever I did. Because the second I started walking away, I got a notification that boarding had started. By the time I got back, I had missed priority boarding and group 9 was boarding.

After all this BS, we finally left at 2:30 pm. Four and a half hours late. And all this time, I kept getting rebooked on short connections, missing those connections, and then getting rebooked again. And then somewhere during the flight, the itinerary changed again. I was now booked with British Airways to go from DFW to London. I was not even emotionally attached to any route at this point.

watching the itinerary mutate in real time

I landed in Dallas at 7:10 PM and saw that, because I had missed the Doha flight, I had been rebooked again. This time through Paris. DFW to CDG, leaving at 8:10 PM. Thankfully, it was only two gates away.

So, I tried to check in for the Paris flight, and I could not. At the door to the CDG flight, the guy couldn’t check me in either. They called a supervisor who was a whole character and I do not want to get into that. They spent 30 minutes trying to figure it out and could not. Because my ticket was first class, they decided to move people around 😕

This is where things got insane. Apparently, one guy had received a premium economy upgrade earlier. They called him and told him they were moving him back. Nobody said it was because of me, but I was standing right next to him while this was happening, which was somehow worse.

Then the gate agent told me I had two different tickets to London and that the whole thing was a mess. If they could not fix it, I might get stuck in Paris.

I was so done with their shit.

A part of me wanted to become a Karen right there. I had enough of their bullshit and, to be fair, I did pay for first class. This felt like a very reasonable time to have a small airport meltdown. But sadly, I am still me, so I just asked nicely if there was any chance they could put me back where I was supposed to be. They said this was the only seat they could get me and I said okay.

I finally boarded the plane. We departed at 9:23 PM. By then, the plan was that I would fly to Paris, sit there for about four hours, take a connection to London, and then fly from London to Delhi. I was now arriving on the 21st at 8 AM instead of the 20th. What a mess.

It was 4 AM on my phone, which I think was Dallas time. My neighbor saw the "DVL4LF" sticker on my phone and asked if I went to ASU. I said yes, and we started talking about ASU, because apparently even in the middle of international ticketing hell, Tempe finds you.

Before takeoff, he called his friend who was apparently learning Dutch. He asked him to say something in Dutch, listened for two seconds, and went, “You sound like you learned Dutch at Arizona State.” Honestly, fair. This was probably the first normal human interaction I had all day.

After some time, people started to sleep and I was not that sleepy. I also did not have in-flight Wi-Fi because of the downgrade and I wasn't gonna watch a movie. So, there was nothing to do except sit there and imagine what new bullshit would be waiting for me in CDG.

But CDG was great. The British Airways staff there actually knew how to operate their internal system. This should not feel like a miracle, but after American Airlines, it did. They checked me in, figured out my bag situation, and generally behaved like people who had used a computer before. The Club Europe lounge was good too.

After a smooth three hours there, I got on my next flight to London. Everything was normal. Nobody called a supervisor. Nobody discovered a hidden duplicate ticket. Nobody downgraded another passenger in front of me. I just got on a plane.

American Airlines is the problem. I am not kidding.

London was also fine. I got on the flight to Delhi, and the BA first class experience was actually really good. This was probably the only flight I fully enjoyed.

Eventually, somehow, I landed in New Delhi - but my bags did not.

At first, this felt like the final insult. Then, after about ten seconds, I realized it was maybe a blessing. I did not have to carry three bags through the airport after whatever the last two days had been. They would get delivered instead. This is called reframing. Or giving up. Sometimes they look similar.

Two days later, the bags arrived.

So, in the end, I made it. My bags made it. Not together, but still.

Almost 15 boarding passes and only 4 flights later, I got from Tempe to Delhi.

There is probably a lesson here about patience or surrender or the illusion of control. Attachment is the root of all suffering. Especially attachment to a 40-minute connection on American Airlines.

Never trust American Airlines with a tight connection.

Actually, maybe never trust.