So, we get to the airport at 7:30 AM this morning, see massive chaos at the airport (imagine 3 extraordinarily long lines snaking into each other to the point where people don’t realize they’re cutting into line or merging into a different line on accident). It was crazy. What was even more crazy was that our confirmed seats on the crazy flights we had this afternoon were deleted again.

There are some theories about what happened but what I’m beginning to believe is that this has to do with the fact that many of the “Continental” flights out of here are actually code share flights with either Northwest or their “express” type carrier (usually a low cost regional airline). The reservation we had today might have actually been deleted by Northwest.

Moral of the story… if you have a choice between the cheapest fare that’s a code share or has a code share segment and a slightly more expensive fare that’s on a carrier’s own route, take the more expensive ticket, especially if you’re traveling on busy travel times like Thanksgiving or Christmas. While the original cause of our original redirection to Newark was because of weather, the fact that we’re still here was because of these magical deletions. I believe at this point that there is a problem with how the airlines deal with code share situations and/or just poor training on the part of Continental (or both).

We’ve found another way to get out of here, but I’m not going to be comfortable until we’re in the air. I suspect that once we’re in the air, it’s hard for them to delete us out of the computer back to Newark.