How I Traveled to NYC and Spent Only $120

No, I didn’t win on a raffle or sold my soul to the devil

Photo by Priyanka Puvvada on Unsplash

My experience actually began with a series of bad luck.

I’m on my way home to the Philippines already from Miami with 4 connecting flights to endure — MIA-NYC-HKG-PH (Usually, the more connecting flights on an itinerary, the cheaper it is). But with a stroke of luck hiding behind a stressful incident, my flight to NYC got delayed due to a technical issue on the plane. Instead of flying directly to NYC, we diverted to Atlanta first. Of course, I didn’t make it on my connecting flight to HKG.

Upon arrival at New York City, I went to the airline’s customer service counter in search of any comforting answer. I was told they’d rebook for a later flight. What can I do right? At least the customer service agent gave me food vouchers. I then went on with a full belly onto playing the waiting game at the airport, and when I say waiting game, this period spanned from 3 to 6 hours.

I’m not the kind of person who could sleep in the airport while waiting and I wasn’t able to take a nap on my flight to New York City, so I literally felt like a zombie awake for 24 hours already.

I decided to wait at the boarding gate as I was too tired to walk around the airport and explore. Hours turned into minutes and the other passengers came one by one. By this time I’m almost 32 hours awake, so I was not really in the mood to do anything but melt in the chair I’m sitting on.

Photo by SUMAN SHAW on Unsplash

Then a few minutes before boarding, as if on cue, a lady went inside the airline cubicle and reached for the mic. I started straightening up, knowing she’ll soon announce for everybody to get ready for boarding. Everyone’s looking at her, anticipating relief. Very calmly, she then started speaking, “We’re very sorry to announce but the flight to Hong Kong ia canceled. There has been a technical issue and we’ll rebook everyone’s flight. Please head to the customer service desk besides counter #7. Thank you”.

What the fuck is happening?

Then it was madness.

It was like The Amazing Race. Everybody started gathering their bags and hurried towards the customer service counter. Every person trying to outrun every other passenger, just so they could be the first ones to the counter.

Yeah, it definitely looks like this. Thank you Rocky for setting the example. Image from Gfycat.

I didn’t even try. I’m tired, pissed, and incredulous that this is happening to me. I dragged myself out of the chair cursing in every language I know and headed in the direction of the other passengers.

The line was very long and waiting took forever. By the time I arrived at the counter, I’m more dead than a zombie. I don’t know if I’m unlucky or what, but I cannot wait anymore for another 3 hours at the airport for another flight.

So I did what a restless out-of-her-mind zombie would do (see the paradox here — zombies don’t have brains anymore — that is how tired I felt). I told the customer service guy what I’ve been through, the two canceled flights and asked politely (ok, more of demanded) if the airline could provide for me a hotel to take a rest first and I’ll just take a different flight the next day.

The customer service agent asked me to wait on the side and he approached somebody further behind who I think is his superior. They were talking for a long time and headed towards a computer pointing at the screen from time to time. After a few minutes, which for me felt like an eternity in the purgatory, the agent asked me to come back to my side of the desk. I was literally holding my breath, praying to God he’d touch the hearts and enlighten the soul of the customer service people of this Godforsaken airline.

And can you believe it, my begging and reasoning worked! They provided me with a hotel to stay in and rebooked a flight for me the next day at 9:55 pm. That means I could still rest and explore New York City the whole next day before my flight that night!

So that is what I did. The $120 I spent was actually for the subway ticket, food I bought outside, a ticket to go up the Empire State Building, a ferry tour to the Statue of Liberty, a taxi cab ride (contrary to what the movies portray, the drivers are actually nice), and the souvenir I bought myself as a reminder of the whole experience.

After this, I looked at canceled flights in a different way.

The souvenir I bought myself was a reminder of the odd but wonderful experience. Image by the author.

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