I know a bunch of people had trouble getting in and out of Panama City. Tell me what you think of this situation:
My sister was supposed to leave Sunday afternoon with USAir. When she got there they told her they had mechanical trouble all day and every flight has been canceled. There are no available seats on other airlines getting out of Panama City. Her options are 1) take a cab to Tallahassee, but they can’t promise she’ll be able to get on a flight there 2) get a refund or 3) wait around till Tuesday but they won’t pay for a hotel and will only give her a $20 voucher to use at the PC airport. She was going to rent a car for the 14 hour drive home, but after some cajoling with USAir’s 800 number we got her a flight out of Pensacola Monday morning. We had to pay $150 more for the flight. Luckily a friend was also flying out of Pensacola that day and gaver her a ride.
Your sister should write a letter to USAir (calmly) outlining her experience and the expenses she incurred. Cite USAir’s Rule 240. It’s not too late for USAir to do the right thing. She’ll likely get a refund of the $150, maybe even more.
Putting things in writing to the appropriate person often does wonders.
Given the population in the area and the often times popular things going on in Panama City Beach( IMFL, Spring Break, The huge new condo developments) I was a bit surprised by the small size of the airport there myself. It didn’t really fit. But I have done an extensive amount of travelling myself and any time you go off the main grid, “things” happen and you have to be mentally and in some cases physically prepared to deal with them.
I learned once there, that many in the PCB area drive to other local airports, even as far as Atlanta to fly out for less money and more options. We learned that we could have saved some money doing this, in reverse, and renting a car, but we learned this too late.
Indeed, my girlfriend’s bike did not make it onto our connecting flight though Atlanta to PCB, but Delta did have it to our Hotel room later on that day. So it was not a big deal. What we found shocking was the bike charge has continued to creep up. It’s now $115(Can) or about $100US. Fortunately, we only had to pay this one-way, as we found someone driving back, who took her bike with them back to Ontario. I can understand now why, Bike shops are offering a pack-ship-and-assemble service that is close to the costs associated with the take-the-bike-with-you options. Dan has written about this recently.
Thanks for the advice. We’ll probably write a letter to USAir. Last time I flew USAir for Gulf Coast they smashed my bike but gave me a very generous check for the damage.
I probably won’t do IM FL again because of the travel situation. I flew Delta and the flight from Atlanta was canceled because the puddlejumper couldn’t fly in the rain. I saw plenty of bike boxes getting put on and immediately taken off the airplane. Glad I shipped mine. It was nice to just turn it in after the race and not have to deal with it. I also heard the boardwalk beach resort is getting renovated. That was a huge disappointment. I still can’t believe that was the host hotel. Kind of embarrassing. Still it’s amazing how little you notice after 12 hours of racing. It was a great race and I can see why they would want to move it somewhere with better logistics. Hope the rumor is true.
There are plans on the books for a new Panama City Beach airport on the west side of the bay. After all, Pensacola airport doubled in size a couple years ago, and Ft. Walton Beach is getting an entirely new building complex altogether that will be about 4x the size of the old building (and more importantly, they’re promising us bathrooms on both sides of security when it opens in a week) so Panama City should have one too. And major developer Arvida/St. Joe has even offered to donate the land for the new airport.
Mid-term result: the usual Florida developers v. citizens v. elected officials v. environmentalists controversy and fuss that ends up being two kooks short of a Carl Hiaassen tale. There will be a new airport in the end. St. Joe’s too big not to get their way, but in the mean time, the screaming and lawsuits continue.
Smaller markets in the Southeast also tend to get stuck with a large presence from ASA- Satan’s commuter airline (as determined by a major airline customer satisfaction survey) and the lack of daily flights can make it difficult to get somewhere if one leg of your trip is fubar’ed and you don’t know the rules. There was a time a couple years back when I was having to pull the “according to law, you have to rebook me on another airline to get me there today, even if the seat on that other plane is first class” line for about three straight trips between FL and MI. (Plays heck with the FF miles too. I fly little enough that I want all my miles on the same carrier)
I say this with honesty, but with respect - I was a bit disapointed with Panama City Beach. Much of the beach strip resembled a deserted ghost-town, what with the many boarded up and closed businessess and forlorn looking t-shirt shops offering 2 for $10 specials. There was a paucity of nicer resturants and everywhere I went out side of the race Hotel and Wal-Mart, no people at all. That’s the bad news. The good news was that the beach itself lived up to and beyond it’s billing. I have been to beaches all over the world, and this is an outstanding beach with a spectatcular south-west view. I am just curious to know what the future of PCB is. Huge condo’s are sprouting like weeds along the shorline and I hear that they are trying to get the spring-break crowd out of town. I guess that it is hard to sell $300,000 condos when the key image of the town is teenagers partying and puking all over the place.
The college kids are going to be gone in the next ten years. People don’t pay $300K for a unit and then let the college kids puke on the carpet. The redevelopment of PCB has laregely come because of rising costs and decreasing amount of developable land for large condo complexes in Destin, and points further west. South Walton/30-A reportedly has reached its cap for large condos and won’t issue permits for the big buildings anymore. And the Air Force effectively has veto power over how high you can build in Destin/Ft. Walton.
Much easier and cheaper to buy out a couple of crumbling beach motels in PCB, and you can also generally go more stories high than you could in Destin. And in the beginning, the developers priced their new PCB complexes 25-30% cheaper for new than what you could buy used in Destin. So the units got snapped up pretty quickly, and developers noticed that, who in turn started planning more tear downs and new buildings, and then the really big developers started coming up with really big plans. The Pier Park development should definitely upgrade the area when it’s finished, and the good restaurants should follow soon. There are already more dining options on the beach than there were five years ago. (Though if we’re making a trip to Panama City, we still hold out for food at the Red Bar in Grayton Beach on the way home rather than dealing with PCB)
The PCB tourist development council is trying to get fall tourism numbers up, but so far they’re getting stomped in that area by Destin/South Walton, who have nicer properties to offer and a better marketing plan. When we moved here, Destin really shut down around October 1. Now it’s a much more year round place save for a lull between Thanksgiving and Christmas. PCB is trying to do the same.
It’s insteresting to be sitting down the road from there and watching the place try to reinvent itself. There’s a lot of good coming out of cleaning up the beach, but it’s sad to see places like the amusement park get turned into yet more condos.