dare to fly Continental??

i am a person who dreams of going places but dreads the thought of travelling, lately my life has left me flying at a frequency that even i think is unreal. I always thought that the reason i dreaded flights and airports was because people were always parting at airports and as my Guy keeps telling me- why do i forget that people also meet at these terminals. Well for some odd reason the going away always seemed to last longer in my thoughts. As i learnt to travel better i was beginning to get over my fear but i bumped into some flight nightmares that i was left wondering if airlines care about anything other than money.

After struggling for hours and spending what seemed like a lot, me and my Fiancee' bought tickets to New Orleans so he could be with me during a conference where i was presenting. He even agreed to go through the pain of taking a red eye flight so we would be on a 10.30 flight from Houston together to New orleans. But the Murphy's law always holds true for flights and his flight was delayed for 6 hours- no explanations given. when i landed from New york I realized he would miss the connecting flight and requested the airlines to put him on another flight and they did nothing except say all flights are overbooked till sunday and he can only put on stand by, I realized they had 40/50 people on stand by on every flight because his was not the only flight that had been delayed.

i saw frustrated travelers at every corner and agents that were only saying we can't help it..some people even asked to fly back to their original destination because they had been delayed for so long on sat flights and were going back on sunday.i asked them to give my confirmed seat to someone on standby and was offered no compensation even though they had offered me compensation in New York to volunteer. We rented a car and drove 6 hours just so he would not spend an entire day in Houston and i would make it in time for a sunday morning 8 am presentation, other than the price of renting we had to pay a 150 Dollar surcharge for returning the car in another city. We were upset but decided to deal with it. But well Continental had a bigger surprise for us, when he got to the airport monday morning his return flight tickets had been cancelled because he didn't take the last flight. They said since this was a part of the contract we had agreed on while buying tickets they could not help us. After a long debate they did eventually put him back on the flight because luckily there were seats available..but i was left spellbound.

after all that we had to deal with? is it possible for a business to sell a consumer 2 products and if i don't use one cancel the other..we had already paid for this flight ..was it not their responsibility to even inform us before they cancelled?? I agree that their are terms and conditions that we sign when we purchase but ... !!

tell me about your flight traumas.. is it just me or do you also have a story to tell??