Thank you, American Airlines!

After the excitement of this weekend’s marathon, you’d think I’d lay low for a while. Not so! In addition to being the start of my fall marathon season (updated with my revenge on the Breakers Marathon, which had discounted entry via Groupon – how cool!), this weekend’s marathon also marked my last ditch efforts to get into bikini shape before a trip with my coworkers to Vegas, where one of the planned activities was drinks at a cabana by the pool. Me? Bikini? In front of coworkers? Yeah, that was going to take some work.

However, due to my own idiocy, it seemed that all my hard work at the gym might be for naught. When I travel for business, I typically fly out of LGA and take a cab to the airport. When I was going through JFK, it was mostly when I worked in the airline industry since that’s where my free flights were. Without a company to pay for the cab ride, I usually took the subway/AirTrain and allowed plenty of time – like 3 hours (I learned that the hard way during my infamous 12 hours in Alaska). However, for this company-sponsored trip to Vegas, I had booked a flight that was leaving out of JFK and planned to take a cab, so I figured I’d leave around 3pm for my 4:35pm flight. With my special clearance that would get me through security quickly, I figured that would be plenty of time.

What I didn’t count on was a) it takes an hour to get to JFK, not 30 minutes as I had anticipated; and b) Midtown would already be totally backed up with rush hour traffic. I ended up sitting in Midtown for about 45 minutes, panicking like crazy, before I finally called American Airlines to see if I could get my flight switched. I dreaded the $150 change fee I knew I’d have to pay… but as it turned out, the awesome concierge from the AAdmirals’ Club was able to put me on a connecting itinerary that left out of LGA (easier for me to get to!)… and for only $50. I was now going through DFW instead of straight to LAS on a nonstop, but I would only arrive 2 hours later than I was supposed to, and I’d get extra miles for my effort. Worked for me! I was thrilled with the level of customer service I got, and couldn’t believe how easy it all was. All that stressing out for nothing…

Vegas, here I come!