Liat is driving me out of my mind!

As everyone knows, all Andy and I want is to get off the island in December with a minimum of complications and delay.  Naturally, all that Liat, that oh-so-unreliable airline of the Caribbean, can do is complicate my life.  I booked our flights home back in August for an 8:50 flight through Antigua to San Juan, and then booked flights on American from San Juan to Nashville.  We were set to get in around midnight.  Not an ideal scenario, but it was sufficient and we would get home in one day.  Then Liat rerouted our flight to not only stop in Antigua, but also in St. Martin, before we get to San Juan around 11:30.  Obviously, the idea of going through security checks and immigration 4 times was not high on my list.  Then, the flight changed to land in San Juan at 1:30, and then a few weeks later at 3:30.  Once our flight changed to put us in San Juan at 3:30, I knew we had to move our flight.

So, I called American Airlines to try to move our flight to one leaving from Antigua instead of San Juan.  Unfortunately, because this island has woefully inadequate internet service, our Vonage phone line died after I spent 30 minutes on hold and had just gotten around to explaining my predicament.  Anyone who knows me, knows that patience is just not my gift, so I was a heartbeat away from throwing the phone at a wall at that point.  We had to have George call American and he found out that you can’t change a domestic flight to an international flight, so that option had to be thrown out.  Our only other option seemed to be to move our flight to the next morning, so that’s what we did.  Now we’re getting home about 12 hours later than anticipated and have to stay the night in San Juan.

Imagine my surprise when I checked my email this morning and I had not one, but three, URGENT emails from Liat.  They changed our flight again.  Now we’re leaving at 7am (which means we have to leave the house no later than 4am) and will be on a direct flight to San Juan arriving at 9:30.  Thus, the original flight plan would have been perfectly fine, but now we’re still stuck in San Juan overnight.  There is a silver lining to these frustratingly dark clouds.  We booked a room at a resort in San Juan on the beach because it was cheaper than the airport hotel.  Also, the new itinerary gives us just three legs in our flights as opposed to five, one trip through customs and two through security, instead of three and four, respectively.  I am hoping and praying that Liat stops changing our flights around because, though it’s changed five or six times already and I was livid this morning at yet another change, I’m satisfied with the new schedule and don’t want any more changes to occur!