Now in Dublin. As it turned out, the agent in Shannon hadn't checked me or my bags through to Edinburgh. In fact, Aer Lingus didn't have any more flights to Edinburgh today, so she apparently just ignored that part of my journey. This could be chalked up to my not stating that up front, but I heard her ask, "Edinburgh, is it?" at some point, and assumed it was taken care of. In fact, I got just one boarding pass and my bags were tagged with a final destination of DUB.

An observation. Aer Lingus is lacking in the customer service department. When I realized, in Shannon, that I only had one boarding pass, I was able to get in touch with an Aer Lingus rep (the Red Telephone got me in touch), but she was cranky and seemed to think I'd done something wrong by grabbing my bags from the carousel and re-checking them. As far as I can tell, I had to go through customs in order to switch airlines, so I think I did the right thing. This cranky rep looked up about five things on the terminal and then declared that there was nothing she could do, that I should talk to the Aer Lingus rep in Dublin.

Fine; I collected my bags in Dublin (noticing the DUB tags) and headed to the Aer Lingus counter marked "transatlantic passengers." This agent said there was nothing she could do, ask there weren't any more flights on A.L. today, and what's more, having booked all this through American Airlines, I could only get a rebooking through them.

Following her directions, I pushed down a long hallway of airline offices and found the room where a couple of AA employees were about to go home. One of them, an American, had a bad cough (whiskey with lemon, recommend the Irish natives on their way out). This woman rolled her eyes and wanted to know the name of the Aer Lingus agent who'd refused to rebook me. "It's a One World carrier," she rightly noted, "They should've done it for you." In spite of her cold and the end of a long day for her, this awesome AA employee, Sheila in Dublin (not normally a customer service rep) awesomely rebooked me on a British Midlands flight to Edinburgh, through Heathrow, leaving shortly.

Altogether, that's three out of three unhelpful Aer Lingus reps (including one who was arguably destructive to my itinerary) and one out of one swell AA rep.