We are on our way home from three wonderful days with the Northern California branch of our family and an introduction to Monroe Priscilla Atarah Grim, our first great-grandchild. I said “three wonderful days.” It was supposed to have been five.
Thanks to United Airlines, we spent more time getting to California and back home to Texas than we spent with family. The travel portion of our family visit included (in round numbers) 50.5 hours of unscheduled travel delays. These delays included 24 hours of cancelation for unspecified reasons, something north of 16 hours because of weather; a diversion to an unscheduled airport due to a combination of ILS equipment malfunction on the ground and fuel shortage on our plane; a mechanical problem with one plane that delayed us just long enough that we missed scheduled connections, resulting in eight hours of unplanned layovers. And we are still in California. We have hopes of getting home by 10:01 Saturday night, instead of the 1:57 p.m. original schedule.
[Ed. Note: Grandma & Grandpa never got home Saturday. Delays and cancellations just flourished.]
Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will.” Clearly Murphy is in charge at United.
One of the highlight experiences in getting to northern California was our stopover in San Francisco. Our flight from Denver was delayed a few minutes by “Traffic Control.” That’s United code for weather. We pulled up near our arrival gate (87) 20 minutes ahead of the scheduled departure time for our final first day flight, which theoretically was a do-able transfer window. However, “near” our gate does not mean, “at” our gate. We sat on the tarmac exactly 22 minutes. Our arrival gate agent checked for us, and announced that our plane had just pulled away, and we would have to go to “Customer Service between gates 80 and 82.”
The line for “Customer Service” snaked several times back and forth in front of the desk, then stretched in a jagged line about 250 ft. down the terminal. We were lucky. We were only about 30 ft. from the snake in front of the service desk, and it only took us about 45 minutes to cover that space. As we got into the area in front of the desk, we could count sometimes 5 and sometimes 6 agents dealing with scores of displaced passengers. While we were in line, I called United and was told we had been booked on the “next” flight to Arcata / Eureka — at 6:43 the next morning.
Assured that that was the best United could do, I was told that I could get hotel vouchers at the service desk. That was the only reason we stayed in that line another hour. During that hour I called a “special 800” number supposedly set up just for our situation, only to be told the same thing I had been told before. By then I had read one of the “Customer Service” area monitors closely enough to discern that the cleverly worded pledge for hotel vouchers added the language “good for discounts at hotels.” At the “Customer Service” the agent who greeted us glibly announced we did not qualify for a hotel voucher because our delay was caused by weather.
The lady finally relented, and handed us a pink card with a phone number to call for the discounts. I did so, and was informed that there were no airline discount rooms available in San Francisco.
Denise at the Auto Club was very helpful. She told us that indeed, a lot of rooms near SFO airport were taken. She found a room only a few miles from the airport at a hotel for which she had no ratings. Although I had impressions to decline that hotel and to call Hilton (where I have a long-standing account), I took the room.
While we were in the process of checking into Focus Hotel, someone took Grandma Nancy’s wallet. We did all the credit card things and stuff, but that created a new issue. In this post 9/11 world, have you ever tried to board a plane without ID? It’s not a pretty process – especially in San Francisco. Well, we’re getting ready to board a plane that should take us to Denver.
Nothing else could go wrong, right?
