Last night I was already tired. I started the day early flying from Hamburg to Newark to Chicago on United with a friend, then was to fly from Chicago to Las Vegas on United on a late evening non-stop flight. I saw that there was space from Chicago to Las Vegas earlier in the afternoon via San Francisco that would allow me to get to Vegas earlier and fly a 747-400 to SFO, so I did a confirmed same-day-change (complimentary as an elite on United) and even managed to preserve my upgrade despite the last-minute nature of the change.
The flight to San Francisco was uneventful, as was my visit to the AMEX Centurion Lounge and the boarding of my flight to Las Vegas. I was really exhausted and hoped to land early and proceed directly to my hotel in Las Vegas. We took off and though the captain mentioned thunderstorms in Las Vegas, an on-time arrival was planned.
45 minutes into the flight, however, the captain came on and announced that storms had shutdown LAS and that because we did not have sufficient fuel to circle the airport for very long we would be returning to San Francisco. A collective groan was heard as many had onward connections to Chicago, Houston, Newark, or Washington.
I don’t quite understand how we did not have enough fuel to circle for 45-minutes over the airport but did have enough fuel to return to SFO, but we back to SFO we went…
We were at SFO for about an hour then took off again, finally arriving into LAS just before 1am.
I slept through the entire “second leg” and sleepily trekked over to the parking garage where Uber pickups are.
Two flights for the price of one…too bad they were back-to-back.
That’s too bad! I once did SFO-SAN(circle 45 min)-SFO, sleep in airport. LAX was full 🙁
Did you mean to say pax have domestic UA connections at LAS? That seems bizarre (granted, a few people connect thru SAN).