Crazy Day

Crazy day!

We were delayed in SF (The City) the entire day. It started out minor, as it usually does (10:20 am pushed to 10:35). The plane was delayed about 15 minutes because of a ‘maintenance issue.‘ We boarded the plan then had to wait for the ‘paperwork.‘ Once completed the captain announced that we were further delayed because of traffic on the run ways. We finally get the OK to pull away from the gate and then sat there for a while. Meanwhile, our flight to Mexico at 12:59pm is slowly slipping away. We finally start to roll around 11:30am, we can still make it! A few minutes later, ‘we have to return to the gate because an indicator light is on that needs to be checked.‘ OK now we see our Mexico flight slipping away into the sunset. We returned to the gate and start making panicked calls to United’s customer service to attempt a reroute. However, they won’t let us de-plane because they are hoping to fix the issue and continue to LA. After all our other flight options vanish, they announce that the plane’s engine needs to be tested and we all need to de-plane. However, the flight might actually happen at some point so they won’t release anyone’s bags and they won’t let anyone change their flights until the test is completed (‘about 1 hour,’ they lie). After the dust has settled and people stopped threatening the United employee working our gate (’Baby sitting‘ is the term I heard her use on the phone … is that the official, corporate manual name I wonder, or just slang that has developed around the airport over the years), I approached for some guidance. She was actually really helpful and nice to me and referred to me as ’a really nice man trying to get to Mexico City.’ Amazing what a friendly smile or lack of a snarl will do for some people’s demeanor. She booked Melissa and me on the next day’s flight from LAX to Mexico City first class (same flight that we just missed #817). We now had a few options, we could stay in San Francisco for the night and then fly to LA on the same flight that just screwed us, or an earlier 7:30am flight. We also had the option to see if our flight would actually leave SFO today and stay at a hotel, free of charge, in LA. This would make the chance of missing our LAX to MEX flight much less likely. So we decided to do this. However right at that moment they announced the plane’s engine test would not be completed until 4pm. People started rushing the desk with rage in their eyes. The ever helpful United employee (wish I got her name) changed us to another LA flight at 4pm, just in case our flight was canceled or further delayed.

Of course you can probably guess what happened next. Our new LA flight was delayed from 4:00pm to 5:20pm right as the departure time arrived. Luckily our originally flight was just a few gates away and started to board as we learned of this newest delay. We walked over and sure enough about 60 people had left and they still had room on the plane. Now get this, because our flight had left the gate at one point, it was no longer on ’the board’ or in the computer system, so all the newly irate people that were learning about their delayed flight didn’t even know there was an LA bound flight leaving 2 gates away at that very moment, with 60 empty seats. I wanted to run over to tell them but didn’t want any chance of missing the flight myself.