John here.

My alarm rang at 5:30 AM. I discovered a text from United that my 8:48 AM flight to Denver was delayed to 10:35, meaning I would miss my connecting flight to Oklahoma City.  No sweat, I thought, there’s a later flight from Denver I can make.

I was in the Premier Access line at United (I had booked a first class ticket using miles) before 7:00. There was only one person in front of me. The agent left the desk, and the passenger turned to me to suggest that I find another line. He had been there for an hour trying to get a problem sorted out. 

I moved to a longer line and eventually worked my way to the front. “Let me see your boarding pass.” I don’t have one, because I checked in online. “Of course you do. If you checked in online, they sent you one.” No they didn’t. “Then go to that kiosk over there and get one.” I did, and a luggage tag, too, and returned to the desk. “I can’t take your bag. You’ll have to go over into that line to drop your bag.”.  And so I did.

I went through security and waited. I started to think, shouldn’t they have rebooked my connecting flight by now? I looked again at the text informing  me of the flight delay this morning. It was sent before 11:00 PM last night! And they blamed it on a late flight preceding mine! How could they know that 10 hours in advance?

I  called United. “Your wait time is greater than 60 minutes.” I tried a link they sent for rebooking. I got an idiot chatbot. I asked the chatbot to let me message an agent directly. “Your wait time is greater than 60 minutes.” I went outside security and back to the checkin counter. I found a helpful agent who spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to rebook me. I can’t get on the later Denver to Oklahoma City flight because it is full. Every other option to get me home today required that I fly economy even though I paid for first class. They might have been able to codeshare with American to get me home , but they don’t share tickets purchased with miles. And on and on.

The only way to use my first class ticket is to take the 11:06 PM red eye to Houston, and fly the rest of the way tomorrow morning. So that’s what I’m doing. Meaning I’m stuck here at the Portland airport all day. 

The agent offered me two $15 meal vouchers, but the system was hung up and wouldn’t execute the request. The agent told me that if they don’t show up in a text or email soon to talk to an agent at a gate in the concourse. I waited two hours. Nothing. Just as I stood up to go find an agent my phone vibrated a couple times. I now have four $20 one-time-use virtual credit cards. The couple of times the agent tried and failed to send them to me paid off with a bonus.

The plan for the four cards: 1) lunch and a beer,  2) afternoon snack and a beer, 3) dinner, 4) a Manhattan just before the bar closes at 9:00.

Did I mention two breweries have places in the D and E concourses here? Hopworks Urban Brewery (where we had lunch yesterday near the bike shop) and Deschutes. I will be patronizing these establishments courtesy of United.

I guess yesterday when we said it was over, we were a bit premature., though Ed did get on his flight  to Detroit on time.

One more travel tidbit. For some reason, even though I have 4 bars of 5G here, I can’t use the internet. The free airport Wi-Fi is useless. I’ve discovered that if I sit in the concourse near United’s first class lounge, I can jump on their password-free Wi-Fi. A small consolation, considering they didn’t have enough compassion, even though I have a first class ticket, to let me sit in their lounge after delaying my travel by 14 hours.

Enough wingeing.