So I find myself on a flight to Auckland, New Zealand. This
was, as the title of this post implies, not what I expected.
When I started planning this trip to Australia, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should check out New Zealand while I'm in that neck of the woods. I've always heard it was a pretty cool place. So when I was checking in for my flight this afternoon, and I found out there was one seat open on the flight to AKL, I leapt at the chance to do a layover in Middle Earth. I changed my itinerary right there on the spot, even rerouting my stateside layover from Houston to San Francisco in the process. A bit of a bold move, I'll admit. But sometimes you gotta just carpe the opportunities you get in life, right?
Except, that's not exactly how this all went down. My impromptu trip to the land of Zea was prompted not by my own whimsy but rather by a quick whipsawing of fortunes for both me and my travel companion, Mike.
The day started off smoothly, with a last minute check of my packing list (yeah mom, I actually made a list) before heading off to put in a half day at work. My flight was leaving from National at 4:30, which was a convenient 10-minute Uber from my office. I planned to work until 2:30 or so before heading to the airport. Plenty of time, even with a bag to check.
The first hiccup came in the form of a text message from United that our flight had been delayed 25 minutes. We already had a bit of a tight turnaround of a little over an hour planned for our layover in Houston. Now it was looking more like 45 minutes. I hopped on the George Bush Intercontinental Airport website (sidebar: I imagine most international airports are intercontinental as well - nobody's putting up an international airport just to get in a couple of flights to Canada. What makes Houston feel like they need to point this out?) to try and see how far it was from our arrival gate to the international terminal. Fortunately, it turns out the intercontinental has a skytrain that connects the terminals, running every 2.5 minutes and taking approximately 4 minutes to go between our terminals. Brilliant.
"gonna be a fuckin mad dash in Houston" Mike texts me, with a screenshot of the delay text he also received from United.
"yeah we Gucci though" I responded, with a picture of my laptop screen showing the results of my research.
I took the delay as an opportunity to wrap up a few more things at work, then headed to the airport. It was a gorgeous day in DC, particularly for mid-February: seventy degrees and sunny, which was twenty or thirty degrees above the highs of earlier in the week. I thoroughly enjoyed the brief cruise down the George Washington parkway, relaxing but also getting very excited to finally be setting off on the journey that I've been looking forward to for months now.
I got to the airport and strolled up to the automated check-in counter. I dipped my credit card in to the reader, but, alas, there was no response. I scanned my passport in its respective reader and it acknowledged the scan but still, no response from the kiosk. I pulled out my phone, searched my emails, and found my confirmation number, which finally was sufficient to pull up my reservation. I went clicking through the prompts until I got to the flight summary page. The takeoff time for the first leg was crossed out in red and replaced with the later departure time. But it was accompanied by a message in big bold red letters across the top. I don't recall exactly what words were used, but what it conveyed was something along the lines of "you're well fucked now, mate."
I glanced back at the departure time and realized that our flight was now delayed two and a half hours, ensuring that we would miss our connecting flight to Sydney. I was directed to get in a line behind a few other poor souls who were presumably in the same boat. Mike texted that he was doing the same with a gate agent, as he had already gone through security. At this point I was still not overly concerned about us making it to Australia. While I assumed flights to Sydney were probably not an hourly occurrence, I was sure they would be able to get us on the next one in a few hours or something like that. Just another mild annoyance to deal with.
Mike and I texted back and forth with updates on our progress through our respective lines. which was, for both of us, not very fast. Right as I finally get to the front of the line and am waiting for the next desk agent to open up, a guy about my age races in a huff to the baggage drop-off scale directly in front of me. He shouts at the nearest agent, "I called United yesterday and they told me I wouldn’t need a bag!"
"Sir, you can't check that without a bag"
"They told me I didn't need to have a bag!"
"Sir, TSA needs to be able to open it to inspect it, then how are they going to put that back together?"
The package that he had propped up against the counter and was wildly gesticulating towards appeared to be roughly the size and shape of a snowboard. It was draped in a layer or two of beach and bath towels in assorted colors. The towels were held in place by a tightly wrapped skin consisting of saran-wrap secured by a haphazard application of liberal amounts of duct tape. The agent that he'd been yelling at picked up the phone to call for backup, or perhaps just to avoid needing to speak to this man any further. I texted Mike to fill him in on this latest development. He responds with 3 successive texts over the next couple of minutes:
"clown shit"
"ok at the desk now"
"lmao this lady is on the phone with someone asking about a snowboard"
So now this guy is impeding our progress on both fronts. The desk agents go back and forth for a bit, but it seems pretty clear he's not getting the snowboard on the plane. Eventually, the situation is resolved when he offers to have a friend come pick up the snowboard so he can get on his flight. Guess you'll be renting some equipment when you get to J-hole, buddy.
The successful resolution of the Snowboard Crisis meant Mike and I arrived at our respective desk agents at roughly the same time. We continued our text correspondence, which mostly confirmed we were getting the same info from our agents as they looked for alternative itineraries for us.
"Where are you headed?"
"Sydney, please"
"Let me see what I can do"
**Types furiously at his keyboard while staring intently down at the screen**
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
"Hmmmm....I can get you on the same flight to Houston and then Sydney tomorrow. get you in to Sydney by 6:30 am Sunday morning"
Well that simply would not do. Part of the impetus for doing this trip now is that I'll be turning 30 on Sunday. To mark the occasion, and not for any other reason, my boy Tyler and one of his Aussie friends booked a massive boat for a harbo[u]r party. They invited 40 of their friends just to celebrate my birthday. This "boaty party," as they called it, was definitely not something that they'd had plans to do for weeks beforehand that just happened to fall fortuitously on the first day of our trip and the Saturday night before my birthday. Bottom line, there was a boaty party being held in my honor halfway around the world, and I'll be damned if I was going to miss it for some United airlines bullshit.
"Do you have anything else?"
"let me check"
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
"hmmmmm.....I can put you on a flight to LAX tonight, then connect you through Honolulu and Tokyo to arrive in Sydney at 2pm two days later"
When I started planning this trip to Australia, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should check out New Zealand while I'm in that neck of the woods. I've always heard it was a pretty cool place. So when I was checking in for my flight this afternoon, and I found out there was one seat open on the flight to AKL, I leapt at the chance to do a layover in Middle Earth. I changed my itinerary right there on the spot, even rerouting my stateside layover from Houston to San Francisco in the process. A bit of a bold move, I'll admit. But sometimes you gotta just carpe the opportunities you get in life, right?
Except, that's not exactly how this all went down. My impromptu trip to the land of Zea was prompted not by my own whimsy but rather by a quick whipsawing of fortunes for both me and my travel companion, Mike.
The day started off smoothly, with a last minute check of my packing list (yeah mom, I actually made a list) before heading off to put in a half day at work. My flight was leaving from National at 4:30, which was a convenient 10-minute Uber from my office. I planned to work until 2:30 or so before heading to the airport. Plenty of time, even with a bag to check.
The first hiccup came in the form of a text message from United that our flight had been delayed 25 minutes. We already had a bit of a tight turnaround of a little over an hour planned for our layover in Houston. Now it was looking more like 45 minutes. I hopped on the George Bush Intercontinental Airport website (sidebar: I imagine most international airports are intercontinental as well - nobody's putting up an international airport just to get in a couple of flights to Canada. What makes Houston feel like they need to point this out?) to try and see how far it was from our arrival gate to the international terminal. Fortunately, it turns out the intercontinental has a skytrain that connects the terminals, running every 2.5 minutes and taking approximately 4 minutes to go between our terminals. Brilliant.
"gonna be a fuckin mad dash in Houston" Mike texts me, with a screenshot of the delay text he also received from United.
"yeah we Gucci though" I responded, with a picture of my laptop screen showing the results of my research.
I took the delay as an opportunity to wrap up a few more things at work, then headed to the airport. It was a gorgeous day in DC, particularly for mid-February: seventy degrees and sunny, which was twenty or thirty degrees above the highs of earlier in the week. I thoroughly enjoyed the brief cruise down the George Washington parkway, relaxing but also getting very excited to finally be setting off on the journey that I've been looking forward to for months now.
I got to the airport and strolled up to the automated check-in counter. I dipped my credit card in to the reader, but, alas, there was no response. I scanned my passport in its respective reader and it acknowledged the scan but still, no response from the kiosk. I pulled out my phone, searched my emails, and found my confirmation number, which finally was sufficient to pull up my reservation. I went clicking through the prompts until I got to the flight summary page. The takeoff time for the first leg was crossed out in red and replaced with the later departure time. But it was accompanied by a message in big bold red letters across the top. I don't recall exactly what words were used, but what it conveyed was something along the lines of "you're well fucked now, mate."
I glanced back at the departure time and realized that our flight was now delayed two and a half hours, ensuring that we would miss our connecting flight to Sydney. I was directed to get in a line behind a few other poor souls who were presumably in the same boat. Mike texted that he was doing the same with a gate agent, as he had already gone through security. At this point I was still not overly concerned about us making it to Australia. While I assumed flights to Sydney were probably not an hourly occurrence, I was sure they would be able to get us on the next one in a few hours or something like that. Just another mild annoyance to deal with.
Mike and I texted back and forth with updates on our progress through our respective lines. which was, for both of us, not very fast. Right as I finally get to the front of the line and am waiting for the next desk agent to open up, a guy about my age races in a huff to the baggage drop-off scale directly in front of me. He shouts at the nearest agent, "I called United yesterday and they told me I wouldn’t need a bag!"
"Sir, you can't check that without a bag"
"They told me I didn't need to have a bag!"
"Sir, TSA needs to be able to open it to inspect it, then how are they going to put that back together?"
The package that he had propped up against the counter and was wildly gesticulating towards appeared to be roughly the size and shape of a snowboard. It was draped in a layer or two of beach and bath towels in assorted colors. The towels were held in place by a tightly wrapped skin consisting of saran-wrap secured by a haphazard application of liberal amounts of duct tape. The agent that he'd been yelling at picked up the phone to call for backup, or perhaps just to avoid needing to speak to this man any further. I texted Mike to fill him in on this latest development. He responds with 3 successive texts over the next couple of minutes:
"clown shit"
"ok at the desk now"
"lmao this lady is on the phone with someone asking about a snowboard"
So now this guy is impeding our progress on both fronts. The desk agents go back and forth for a bit, but it seems pretty clear he's not getting the snowboard on the plane. Eventually, the situation is resolved when he offers to have a friend come pick up the snowboard so he can get on his flight. Guess you'll be renting some equipment when you get to J-hole, buddy.
The successful resolution of the Snowboard Crisis meant Mike and I arrived at our respective desk agents at roughly the same time. We continued our text correspondence, which mostly confirmed we were getting the same info from our agents as they looked for alternative itineraries for us.
"Where are you headed?"
"Sydney, please"
"Let me see what I can do"
**Types furiously at his keyboard while staring intently down at the screen**
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
"Hmmmm....I can get you on the same flight to Houston and then Sydney tomorrow. get you in to Sydney by 6:30 am Sunday morning"
Well that simply would not do. Part of the impetus for doing this trip now is that I'll be turning 30 on Sunday. To mark the occasion, and not for any other reason, my boy Tyler and one of his Aussie friends booked a massive boat for a harbo[u]r party. They invited 40 of their friends just to celebrate my birthday. This "boaty party," as they called it, was definitely not something that they'd had plans to do for weeks beforehand that just happened to fall fortuitously on the first day of our trip and the Saturday night before my birthday. Bottom line, there was a boaty party being held in my honor halfway around the world, and I'll be damned if I was going to miss it for some United airlines bullshit.
"Do you have anything else?"
"let me check"
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
"hmmmmm.....I can put you on a flight to LAX tonight, then connect you through Honolulu and Tokyo to arrive in Sydney at 2pm two days later"
“Two days later as in Saturday?” I asked, optimistically.
This exchange took place on Thursday afternoon, mind you. As I write this, I have no idea what day it
is where I am, or back home, or in Australia. It’s sometime late week or early
weekend.
“No, 2pm Sunday”
“So is there anything that could get me there on Saturday? I
have a very important event I’m flying out to attend”
“Let’s see”
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
“It doesn’t appear so”
Just then I recalled that Mike had texted me while we were
in line that he saw a flight out of Dulles that connected through San Francisco
to Sydney. I proposed that to my guy.
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
“There is room on the flight out of Dulles”
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
“And the flight from San Francisco tonight is….”
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
“Completely booked, I’m afraid. It looks like your only
options are all going out tomorrow”
“You double-book flights all the time. You can’t just, kind of, slide me in there? It’s not my
fault that your plane never
showed up in DC”
“We can’t do that. It’s very icy in Chicago, which is what
delayed the plane. Nothing we can do about it.”
Despair began to set in. I was going to miss the boaty
party. This sucks. But I had one last suggestion to try.
“Is there anything available on one of your partner
airlines?”
“Hmmmm….Let’s have a look”
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
…….
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
…….
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
“hmmmm…..”
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
**Typing increases in pace and intensity**
[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety-Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
…
[Clikk-clack-Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]
“There may be one option, if you’re willing to travel
without your friend. It looks like there’s one seat available to fly to San
Francisco tonight, then a quick turnaround to a flight to Auckland, then on to
Sydney getting you there at 1pm Saturday”
“Done, let’s do that.”
Sorry, Mike. The Boaty Party
beckons. The agent starts booking me through, right as Mike called me.
Explaining to him that I had found a path to victory, but there was no room for
him, was not much fun. But I persuaded him to join me on the SFO flight out of
Dulles. At the very least, he’d be cutting United Airlines out of the equation
as to whether he would make the next Sydney flight tomorrow.
We quickly called an Uber, as rush hour was beginning to
descend upon the district and travelling out to Northern Virginia after 4pm can
be hell on earth. We raced to Dulles, and got there with plenty of time. Mike
tried again to work with the desk agent to find a way to get to Sydney by
Saturday. No luck. In fact, she expressed sincere doubt that even I would be
able to make the turn at SFO. So we both were looking at a likely overnight in
the Bay Area and the prospect of “catching a miss” (Aussie slang term that
makes no sense) on the boaty party.
Disheartened, we went through security and lined up to board the plane.
Knowing that I would likely have to sprint from the gate as soon as we landed,
I bid farewell to Mike saying I’d see him in “Sydney, San Francisco, or
somewhere in between.”
Fortunately for me, the flight to San Fran landed ahead of
schedule. I took off for the International terminal at a brisk pace. Mike managed to catch up with me along the
way. He had wisely added himself to the
standby list for the 11:00 flight to Sydney, and was headed to check on his
prospects. We parted ways again as I split off to board my plane. We wished
each other good luck and Godspeed.
As I successfully boarded my flight for New Zealand, I
realized that the worst part of this whole fiasco (for me) was that my
oh-so-clutch-booked-3-months-in-advance-and-didn’t-even-have-to-pay-extra-for-it
exit row aisle seat with virtually unlimited leg room and easy access to the head
and no risk of somebody waking me to get out to pee was now gone. I was back in
full-on steerage with the rest of the peasants. Let’s see how well my bum knee
feels after 13 ½ hours of this.
Just before I put my phone into airplane mode, a bit of
great news comes through from Mike.
“I got on”
Cheers, mate! Mike was making it to the boaty as well. After
all this, he was getting a direct flight to Sydney and arriving 4 hours before
me. I wouldn’t trade him those 6 hours of uncertainty before he found that out,
though.
Provided we encounter no more significant “hiccups,” we’ll
all be in the harbor by nightfall Saturday (is that tomorrow? Later today? Next
week? It’s unclear). So there ya go.
😁
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