Round The World and other travels

Epilogue

 - Homeward bound (but no desperate rush)

While the sightseeing was now over, the homeward journey still had around 3.5 days to run. In contrast to the outbound arrangements, Bruce and I travelled together on this leg as far as Dublin.

Saturday 03 September

Following a Starbucks breakfast at Waikoloa, we packed and checked out at noon. Suddenly, it felt as though our time at the wonderful Mauna Kea Beach Hotel had just flown by! We travelled on the same type of aircraft (A321S) back to Los Angeles. Neither of us had ever before heard an announcement being made advising passengers that the call buttons were for emergency use only - I mean, really? The in-flight meal was nice, but the service was rushed. When our flight attendant failed to ask how we were doing for drinks when our trays were delivered, we decided that this qualified as a 'wine emergency'.

The snack service followed hard on the heels of the main meal and at this point, it became apparent that all the crew wanted to do was yak incessantly in the front galley for the remainder of the flight. We were glad not to be seated in Row 1. This being an eastbound flight, darkness fell quickly. At the Hilton LAX, I used the 'electronic key' facility for the first time, which meant no stop at the front desk and opening the room door with my smart phone.

ABOVE (LEFT to RIGHT): 1: Final early-morning view from the room.  2-5: Departure from Kona.  6: AA58 in-flight meal, en route to LAX.

Sunday 04 September

Following transfer back to LAX from our overnight hotel, we endured one of the most unbelievably hideous check-in experiences of our respective travel histories, either jointly or separately. Bruce went forward first and soon ran into problems regarding our upcoming overnight stop in Boston: the check-in agent insisted that his hold luggage must be checked through to Dublin, despite having an overnight stop. A supervisor was called, who backed the agent to the hilt: no short-checking of bags under any circumstances! Meanwhile, I went up to a different check-in agent and said I'd like to have my case back for the overnight stop. "No problem, Sir - you'll obviously need access to your belongings tonight."

When the supervisor realised what had happened, she went ballistic, pulling my bag off the conveyor and insisting that my check-in be reversed out and redone "correctly". My check-in agent - God bless her! - refused, citing common sense and good customer service. The stand-off that ensued lasted nearly an hour. Bruce eventually felt obliged to agree to do without his bag at Boston, in the interests of moving forward, at which point the supervisor told me that I could go now. I replied that I wasn't moving from this spot until I could see my own bag moving along the belt, with its current labels intact. It took at least one further prompt - please, just do it, then I'm out of here - before sanity prevailed and somebody placed my case back on the belt.

We left, stunned, asking ourselves and each other: what just happened?! This epic customer service failure cost us a visit to the Qantas lounge and the nice breakfast that would have come with it. Our flight to Boston was on an older Boeing 737-800, not yet in current livery and fitted with old seats without individual screens. After the in-flight meal, I passed the time by watching the movie Money Monster and a number of Big Bang Theory episodes on one of the tablet computers and Bose headsets that the crew had distributed.

On arrival at the Hilton Boston Airport, we reflected on the day's journey over a dry martini.

Monday 05 September

Following the previous day's shenanigans, today's return to British Airways seemed like a case of 'better the devil you know'! While the BA Club World hard product was no longer state-of-the-art, it was perfectly adequate on the relatively short day flight from Boston to London. The follow-up BA826 to Dublin was a routine short hop in Club Europe.

ABOVE (LEFT to RIGHT): 1: British Airways lounge at Boston Logan  2-3: BA238 BOS-LHR day flight, in Club World  4: BA 'F' lounge at LHR T5 5-6: BA826 LHR-DUB, in Club Europe

Tuesday 06 September

And the home straight was a further routine hop across the Irish Sea on Aer Lingus Regional, bringing to an end another flight extravaganza (KOA-LAX-BOS-LHR-DUB-EDI) amounting to nearly 9,000 miles, with an 11-hour time change.

Closing thoughts

British Columbia confirmed itself as a scenically beautiful part of North America, as did Vancouver as a vibrant and interesting city.

On the Big Island of Hawaii, the combination of a fabulous hotel stay, some unique landscapes and the aloha spirit of the islands made for a wonderfully relaxing and interesting stay. Successfully dodging a twin-hurricane threat certainly helped!

Two organisations came out of this trip with severely tarnished images. In the case of the Maldron Dublin Airport hotel, losing a reservation once seemed regrettable. Losing it twice, with additional evidence of a similar problem affecting another guest, looked careless and incompetent. To then reject a complaint outright and deny the existence of an issue was unforgivable.

In the case of American Airlines, how could a pair of One World Emerald customers be affected by such a catalogue of service failures in the space of a single week? First there was my involuntary downgrade, then Bruce's luggage was lost for two days on a simple, point-to-point journey, and finally the check-in fiasco from Hell, where just about anything seemed to matter except the interests of the customer. Interestingly, the 'big three' US legacy carriers would all go on to experience a series of public relations disasters in the months that followed.

A few months later, I was successful in redeeming my USD500 compensation voucher from American Airlines to fund an extension to the planned Roaming the Rust Belt trip in 2017.

And finally, notwithstanding the negatives, this was overall - without a shadow of doubt -  another excellent and memorable trip!

03-06 September

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