Airport Delays

I am at the airport waiting to catch my last flight of the year and it is turning into a little adventure. One would think that the San Francisco airport would be able to handle a little bit of rain. Nope there is a comedy of errors that are working against it and I find myself in the middle. Normally I would have a fellow travel buddy to share the grief but this evening is a day earlier than my regular weekly flight and so I will have to share my adventure with you.

For those that don't know, Tuesday is generally the best day of the week to purchase airplane tickets. I have a regular routine where I go through my existing flights and make sure I have the best prices on existing flights and then book any additional flights so that I have travel booked 3 months out. Yesterday was that day and I had to book a number of flights on Southwest due to schedule conflicts. Then I got into the office this morning with an e-mail from Southwest letting me know that one of the flights I booked in March is now cancelled. They rebooked me on a much later flight that doesn't get me home until after 1am. What they didn't tell me is that the original flight I booked was twice as expensive as this new flight nor did they offer me a refund of the difference. No offense Southwest, but that is a bit underhanded. I cancelled the rebooked flight and got my money back. I will look at other options on other airlines as getting in after 1am is not an option.

With that as a background story, let me now move onto today's flights. After getting my Southwest flight cancelled, I got another e-mail. This time from Alaska Airlines letting me know I had been upgraded to First Class. I thought that strange as I am not scheduled to fly again for the next  several weeks. When I looked closely, the upgraded flight is for today and scheduled to leave out of San Jose instead of San Francisco. Then I got another e-mail from Alaska explaining that today's flight would now be leaving out of San Jose and I had to arrive at the San Francisco airport 2 hours early. If I did that, they would make arrangements for me to get to San Jose. There was only one problem, I had a meeting that I needed to be in and couldn't be at the San Francisco airport 2 hours early.

I had arranged a ride to the airport and managed to move my ride to 45 minutes earlier. This enabled me to be at the airport at the appropriate time for the airline to get me to San Jose. Next I headed to my meeting and explained to my visitors from Japan that I would need to cut the meeting in half so I could accommodate a change in departure airports. It worked out and we finished just as my ride showed up to bring me to the San Francisco airport.

I arrived at the airport with 15 minutes to spare and walked up to the ticket counter. The agent politely helped me check in and started to arrange an Uber ride to San Jose. Then a supervisor came up and explained that traffic would prohibit me from making my flight. "Oh crap," was the only thing I could think of as I knew I would get home but knew when would be measured by a calendar instead of a clock. The last time this happened, I got routed on a late flight to Seattle where I slept in the airport before catching a 5:30am flight to Salt Lake. Fortunately a different supervisor intervened and they put me on a Delta flight leaving out of San Francisco an hour earlier than my original flight. The only downside is that I would have to give up my First-Class seat. In my mind I am just happy to be getting home an hour earlier than I originally thought.

I ran next door to the Delta counter and got a seat assignment. I headed through security and made it to my new gate just as the plane was supposed to start boarding. Then I saw that the Delta flight was delayed to a 5:57 departure. That is about the same time as my original flight. I had no luck on the seat assignment but I did have a window seat somewhere in the middle of the plane.

So now I find myself hanging out in the San Francisco airport waiting for a delayed Delta flight to Salt Lake City. I'm sure my departure will get moved out at least once before I board but I am happy to be going home this evening. Let's hope it actually is this evening.