I ended up having a bit of an interesting flight home yesterday. I got to the airport about 2 hours early, because while I had already upgraded to Economy Plus (United's "pay to be comfortable" program), the online system would not let me select an exit row. So I waited in line forever, and finally got up to the desk where a woman confirmed me for 10C on the flight to Chicago and 12C on the flight home. Remember that second seat number for a bit.
As I headed towards the gate, I happened to glance over at another gate and see that a Chicago flight that was supposed to have already left was delayed. Uh, oh. When I got to my gate, sure enough: delayed. I looked around, and every Chicago flight was delayed. Someone eventually came on and said that there had been tornadoes near O'Hare, and that the airport had been completely closed for over an hour.
At that point, I got on the phone to my dad (a former United customer service rep) to have him start searching for alternatives. There was a flight leaving at 6:30 (mine was supposed to go at 4) to Denver, from which I could connect to Sacramento and actually only arrive about ten minutes late. So when one of the other gate agents was freed up, I went over and asked if she had seats on that flight, which she did. So she was very nice and confirmed a seat for me for each leg - she said they were the last seats on each plane - while still keeping me on my original flight. And that was a good thing, because the weather cleared in Chicago and while the earlier flights were still delayed, mine left pretty much on time.
When we arrived at O'Hare, it was pandemonium. I don't know how anyone could work there without going insane. I had about 2 hours to kill, though, so I grabbed a sandwich and then got lucky in that I found a place where I could sit down near an outlet and recharge my laptop.
When it got time to go to my gate, I wondered over there. O'Hare has these flat-screen TVs at each gate that show all of the details about the flight. The first thing I noticed was that my flight was less than half full, so that pretty much guaranteed that I'd have a row to myself. Cool. But then it showed the seating layout of the plane, and quite clearly indicated that Economy Plus ended at row 11. Remember what row the ticket agent at Orlando had put me in? Yup - 12. So I went up to the gate agent to complain, and she said that while row 12 was technically not in Economy Plus, it was an exit row and would have the leg room. OK, fine. I could assume that she had had a pretty bad day, and I decided not to argue ... until I got on the plane and discovered that the exit rows were 10 and 11, and that not only was row 12 the first row of steerage ... I mean, of regular economy, but it was the row behind the exit row, and had the normal amount of leg room, which of course is none at all. So I went up to the flight attendant and explained the situation. He went to check with the gate agent, and they moved me up to row 10. I was lucky since the plane was empty (I did have the row to myself, and in fact I'm pretty sure that the only folks who didn't were people traveling together), but if it had been full and I had had to sit in a regular row - after having paid for the leg room, well to say I would have been mad would be an understatement.
We took off a few minutes late, but then the fun began again. Almost as soon as we were in the air, the pilot came on the speakers and explained that there was a nasty storm to the west, so we were going around it, meaning that we would fly from Chicago to Sacramento by passing over St. Louis, and it would add about an hour to the flight time. An hour or so later, he announced that we would have to go further south - in fact, we ended up passing near Dallas before being able to turn west. So while we pretty much left on time, we arrived close to 2 hours late. They even showed two movies (neither of which I watched) because the flight was so long. Of course, the longer flight did not translate into more food for us, but fortunately I had brought my own on board.
There's a cool website called FBOWeb.com where you can get a real-time tracking of a flight, and it shows clearly how far out of the way we had to go. I'm writing this right now from a training center that (annoyingly) does not allow FTP access, so while I have a screen shot of the route, I won't be able to post it until I get home, but it's amazing.
So I finally got home at about 1:30, at long last ending my long month and a half of travel. I had a great time, met lots of awesome people, and got to end it by going to my favorite conference, hang out with friends and meet some new ones. But I am definitely not looking at doing that much travel again in the near future.
