India Travels and Travails

We checked out of the Holiday Inn Express and wasted an hour talking to three different Air India agents to see if the upgrades we requested through the site Optiontown had cleared.

It then took upwards of an hour to go through security. Kathy got through her search (in the booth for females) and then watched as the security people took almost everything out of Brian’s bag, full of cables and headphones and batteries. 

First though, Brian had put his boarding pass away so he and the pleasant soldier searching him had to wait for it to come through the baggage x-ray.

We spent a little time in an unexciting Air India Lounge before walking to the gate.

At the gate, we checked one last time on the uograde, as suggested by a supervisor; however, the employee told us she couldn’t do a thing.

We boarded a little after 11:15 AM for this 12 noon flight and headed back to Row 30. At 11:33 AM we received an email from Optiontown telling us our upgrade had been approved.

Sorry, guys, but too late to do a thing, as Brian emailed them. Optiontown’s response, probably automated, included an apology and a request for a scanned PDF file of our boarding passes.

Brian emailed them photos and asked them to consider using them. It was a lot of hassle for about 45 minutes in the air.

Our pre-arranged driver was awaiting us at Jaipur. Nothing too fancy and no seatbelts in the back seat, but we made it. There was both pleasure and frustration still to come though.