Creeping delays, a late evening flight, and a 45-minute connection in San Francisco very nearly doomed my United 1K mileage run to Sydney.
All day my flight from Burbank to San Francisco showed on-time, but all day I knew it would not be. That’s because of the “Where is this aircraft coming from?” feature on the United app.
My CRJ-200 that would take me to SFO was having a busy day. From San Francisco to Calgary in the morning, then back to San Francisco, then down to Burbank, and finally back to SFO.
I noticed the flight to Calgary was delayed. That caused an even longer delay on the return to San Francisco, and of course another delay down to Burbank.
But my flight was still showing on time…even though my plane was scheduled to land three minutes before takeoff…
The delay finally posted and because the schedule is well-padded, we were only due into San Francisco about 15 minutes late.
Even with a now tighter connection, I could make it.
Oh by the way, could I have booked an earlier flight from Burbank and avoided the stress? I could have…but I was not about to sacrifice even more time away from my family.
The ground staff at Burbank did a great job of getting everyone off and then back on again. In fact, it happened so quickly the captain proudly proclaimed we would be landing on-time in SFO.
Problem solved, right?
Not quite. We landed ahead of schedule and taxied for several minutes. Weather was bad in SFO and the captain announced that our gate was occupied due to an ATC delay.
Time was 9:50PM. My connection to Sydney was scheduled to depart at 10:45PM. I was not worried at all.
But we sat there. And sat there. And sat there. There is nothing more agonizing for a travelers than sitting in front of your gate and being unable to get off the airplane.
The captain, clearly frustrated, checked in with us every 5-10 minutes advising us that we were still waiting for our gate.
At 10:20PM we began moving again. Whew, I thought…I can still make it.
But then we stopped again. The captain apologized, stating that there were no ramp workers available. You should have heard the collective groans.
I received a text message stating that my flight to Sydney was delayed to 11:00PM.
Finally, at about 10:35PM, we began moving again. By 10:40PM I was off the aircraft and began running…I’d have to get from Terminal F to Terminal G, which is a 12-minute walk.
If my flight to Sydney was indeed leaving at 11:00PM, I only had five minutes to make it before I was subject to being offloaded.
I started to run…down the concourse, over thee bouncy conveyors belts, past Yankee Pier and the American Express Centurion Lounge, and finally down the long hall linking the international terminal (G).
It was 10:44PM.
But all of a sudden another text message arrived. The flight was delayed until 11:15PM…boarding had not even begun.
Panting for breath, I found myself next to the Polaris Lounge.
…and headed upstairs for a drink.
I made the flight. We ended up departing around 1:00AM…
Every day travel, no? No sure worthy of a blog post.
The great thing about running your own blog is that anything you deem worthy of a post automatically becomes worthy of a post.
True ‘dat
I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it too.
Even if the flight from SFO to SYD is on time, wouldn’t United know that there is a connecting pax (you already checked-in all the way to SYD) coming, and try to hold that flight a few minutes for you?
I was hoping for a Mercedes Benz tarmac transfer, but I’ll have to earn Global Services for that…
“There were no ramp workers available”. How is that possible??? They knew a plane was getting to the gate. They knew the plane was getting late. They knew there were passengers with tight connections. How is that possible???
Rainy weather with poor visibility. I think it was just busy and there ATC delays galore.
Yipee, you made it!!! Thanks for the updates. You are better than Norad tracking Santa. They lie about Santa tracking but you tell the truth! (The truth of the matter is that Santa must have stealth technology because he cannot be tracked…they should just tell kids “We at Norad cannot track Santa so kids should study hard in science and engineering and be able to work for Norad and industry when they grow up and not have to resort to prostitution or selling drugs)
Watch out for CRJ-200s through SFO! They love to cancel/delay those little guys. That’s the take away. Glad you made it, with time for a drink!
Terrible delays out of Sydney yesterday too. I saw the UA flight was one of the few back to LAX that made it on time. DL, UA cancelled yesterday and today. Smoke?
Oddly, it was a cool, cloudy day in SYD with little smoke in the air.
I think it’s pathetic if you can figure out delays in advance but the system cannot. The system is useless. United needs to improve it. Or maybe they just value your time a little less than their own profits.
Can’t imagine a data centric guy like kirby would be ok with this.
I’ve had my fair share of close calls like these and love to read others’ stories. Glad you made it and with a Polaris cocktail no less!
I am so confused why I just read this.
Been there, done this. BUT the most remarkable thing from your story is that the captain ACTUALLY TALKED TO THE PASSENGERS and gave periodic status updates. Too often, I’ve been in situations like this — either we push back from the gate and then sit for 40 minutes, or we land and we park in a penalty box for an hour, and too often the pilot doesn’t even bother to explain what is going on.
I totally understand that there are factors beyond the control of the pilot that will affect my travel, but if I knew what was going on, I could better compensate for flight delays (e.g email coworkers that I’ll be 40 minutes late…)
Connection Saver at work…
Great story! Always enjoy reading.
Love to hear the actual MR itself.
Article coming!
Was sitting ont he tarmac at the same time but no intermittent updates from the Captain – only an initial guess it would be over 30 minutes. 90 minutes total with lots of SIN pax on board.
Fortunately SIN and SYD each took a delay to accommodate – but the crew didn’t provide that info. At least it was visible in the app
I used to fly SFO/BUR a lot for work. After too many issues with the UAX flights, I and my colleagues eventually switched to SFO/LAX as the SFO/BUR flights were too unreliable.