El Dorado County couple’s nightmare travel story leads to lost luggage, missed cruise
By Lee Anne Denyer
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PLACERVILLE, California (KCRA) — A delayed flight out of Sacramento started a domino effect of travel issues for a Placerville couple that led to missed flights, lost bags, and a $17,000 vacation in limbo, they said Wednesday.
“I don’t know what we could have done differently,” Joseph Gargus said. “One flight started it, and it snowballed.”
Upon arriving at Sacramento International Airport, Joseph and Gabriela Gargus learned their first flight from Sacramento to Denver on June 28 was delayed. The delay would impact their next flight from Denver to Munich. Despite shuffling flights, when the couple finally arrived in Denver, their next flight, now to Frankfurt, was leaving just as they arrived.
They ended up stuck in Denver for three days.
“Called and tried and get a live agent, and they said the wait time was 10 hours,” Joseph Gargus said. “The bags were falling off the carousel. There was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bags.”
Their luggage, however, was nowhere to be found.
Despite being told the luggage would remain in Denver, the couple says over the last week, they’ve been told multiple and contradictory answers about where their luggage might be. The last agent told them Gabriela’s bag ended up in Munich. Joseph’s, he said, is in Lima, Peru.
“Even if we were on the cruise, we’d still have on the same clothes we had on June 28,” he said.
The Garguses say they’re hopeful Viking Grand Tour is able to rebook them on another cruise and that United Airlines takes responsibility for the issues that caused them to miss the trip to begin with. They’re also hoping their luggage turns up.
For people traveling this summer, they suggested packing essentials in a carry-on to ensure you have something should you get stuck, paying for travel insurance and getting to the airport early.
“There was just nothing we could do,” he said.
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