Our Unintended Staycation

How depressing is the term, "staycation"? It means that you don't have the money to go somewhere for vacation - or, in our case, it means Frontier sucks and you can't get to where you want to go until 3 days later!

Will and I are supposed to be visiting his family in Gig Harbor for the holidays. We were supposed to leave last night. But while at a holiday party at my parents' house, Will's dad called to tell us that our flight had been cancelled.

Now, I'm a reasonable person. Seattle is socked with snow that they can't handle so they shut the airport down. That's a perfectly acceptable thing to do. And I can be patient with a weather delay. But we were supposed to be in Gig Harbor on Sunday night, and now Frontier is telling us that they can't rebook our flights until Wednesday - arriving in Seattle at 8 pm. Yep, that's right. We get in late on Christmas Eve - at best we'll be at the house around 9:30 pm.

Here's the kicker - we're supposed to come home on Friday night. Our week long vacation to the Northwest is now going to be 48 hours and 30 minutes. And Frontier is being a complete jerk about helping us extend our time out there.

Sucky Frontier: "Sure, we can book you on a later flight coming home - when would you like to come back?"

Me: "Umm, Monday?"

Sucky Frontier: "No flights available that day."

Me: "Umm, Sunday?"

Sucky Frontier: "Sure, let me look. No flights available that day either."

Me: "Saturday?"

Sucky Frontier: "Sure, let me look. No flights on Saturday."

(Side note - if we wanted to BUY a ticket for any of these days, we could for an outrageous price. So Sucky Frontier is cramming even more folks onto already oversold flights for a premium price.)

Me: "So, our week long vacation is now reduced to 48 hours and you can't do anything to help?"

Sucky Frontier (now with an attitude): "You know, you're really lucky to get out there before Christmas - we have lots of passengers that aren't getting out to Seattle until the 27th."

That may be true, but it doesn't make the situation suck any less or make me feel any warmer or fuzzier towards your airline.

I estimate that I've spent about $15k on airline tickets in 2008 between work & personal travel. And while I really hope I don't have to travel that much in 2009, I can guarantee that Frontier is not getting any of that business next year, unless they start making this better ASAP.

Okay, now it is time for an attitude adjustment... Any thoughts on what we should do with our 3 extra days of time in Boulder?