So I posted a story a few days ago about my experience flying to Salt Lake City. If you missed it check it out here. Here is my return trip. Anyone in the mid-west or east coast knows that there have been some sizeable snow storms. This managed to screw up my day. Hard. The flights home were from SLC to Chicago and on to VT. Unfortunately Chicago was down to one arriving and one departing runway and this caused significant delays. We got into O'hare just in time to see the connecting flight taxi away from the gate. The good news: there's another flight. The bad news: it's in 20 hours. Not only will we have to take our bags, but we risk being stuck due to weather either in Chicago or on the east coast. The airline wanted us to take our bags and come back the next day. I tell them that I would be way more comfortable if they kept our checked baggage. This is a no go for them. They don't want the responsibility. I then tell them why I want them to keep it. They still don't care. My wife and I take a breather from the customer service desk to regroup and prepare for another possible arrest. Then, we cook up a daring plan. There was a flight leaving in 2 hours that landed in Boston. We'll rent a car and essentially smuggle my legally owned property through enemy territory, then just get our truck from Burlington. We got the airline to put us on the flight and gave them all of our baggage information because they still hadn't unloaded it yet. The clerk assures me that everything will be forwarded to the new plane. Once we are sitting, we rent a car from Logan airport and schedule the pick up for just after we land. Wheels touch down and now we are each waiting for the bags. She's by the carousel and I'm at oversized baggage claim waiting for the snowboard. (We bought extra luggage in SLC for the trip home). Then we wait. And wait.....still waiting. Over at the baggage office, after some searching on the computer and a couple phone calls we get the news: Our bags never made it to Boston, and no one in Chicago has any clue where they are. They didn't get scanned off the old plane or on to a new one. The plus side is that I don't have to become an arms smuggler...but we also don't have most of our luggage or my gun. They help us file a claim and are off to try and not get stuck driving in a snow storm. By the time we get home we've both been up for right around 40 hours. I'm convinced that our stuff is gone and I'll eventually get a call when my gun shows up at a crime scene. Over the next 12 hours I'm on the phone with different representatives and continually checking the online claim for any activity. The only comfort that they offered was that if they couldnt find our bags in three days, they would give us $1500 per suitcase. At this time I had gotten high enough up the command chain to make sure the following sentence had the right effect. "I've had it with the run around, and if it were just luggage maybe I wouldn't care. But at this point I'm going to contact the ATF as well as Chicago PD and let them know that my handgun has been stolen while in YOUR airline's possession" and i just hang up. I immediately get a call from the supervisor's boss's boss. They want to handle this in house and he askes for a couple hours. I tell him that it's already been 12 and that he has 45 minutes. Turns out this rattled the right cage and in 27 minutes I get a call saying that they had located my bags, and verified that there was an undamaged gun case in the roller bag. Probably helps that it was cable locked to the metal suitcase frame. The bags find their way on to the next flight to Burlington and a measly 6 hours after they land, they are given to a courier to be hand delivered to my house. Finally at 11pm i get to sign some papers and get all of my stuff back. The entire trip was great while we were in Utah, and bookended by a massive shit storm of aerial fire, and convoluted gun laws. I'm happy to be safe and back with my children. Not dead, and not in jail. I sure as fuck hope that national reciprocity passes with flying colors. via /r/CCW http://ift.tt/2sfiNP7
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