By now I should be fast asleep in a drunken stupor about a flight bound for SFO. Should being the operative word. United Airlines flight 858, the penultimate 747-400 for that airline leaving Shanghai Pudong Airport suffered a mechanical problem which caused it to be cancelled and that’s the focus of this blog post.
No, I’m not going to write how terrible the airline is or how annoyed I am about the cancelled flight, mainly because I am neither annoyed nor thinking United is terrible. They take care of me and for that I’m grateful!
Currently I have Premier Platinum status on United, which means I flew 75K miles and spent $9K dollars on the airline last year. It’s not the highest of status, but it comes with some good perks. One of my favorite, and least used perks, is the ability to call the airline and speak with a representative rather quickly when needed. Today was just one of those times.
After flight #858 was cancelled we were told to deboard (is that a word?), go back through immigration, collect our checked bags, then visit the ticket counter to figure out what’s next. The line to be processed by immigration was long and slow going so … I booted up my USA phone (cellphone carrier is Google Fi) and called United to see if I could get on one of the later flights. After about 10 minutes not only was I rebooked to Seattle I was even confirmed in a business class seat even though my original ticket was in economy!
(OK, a little explanation on my ticket: it was an economy ticket that could be upgraded to business if space was available and I had an upgrade certificate. There was no space left for people upgrading but there were business class seats available. (?!?!) Seeing as I previously did have an upgraded ticket and a biz class seat, the agent changed my ticket to a biz class fare and assigned me seat 1D. Trust me, I’m not complaining!)
Next up was getting my bags off the carousel at the Shanghai-Pudong airport. United places special tags on the bags of their frequent flyer and those bags should be the first ones off the plane. Today that worked in my favor as mine was the fifth bag to come off the conveyor belt. Score!
Seeing as I now have my bag that needs to be rechecked, I went up to departures to see the ticketing agents. There was a line for business class and a terribly long one for economy. Uggh. Both lines got MUCH larger after I queued up as all those other passengers whose bags did not come off the belt first were now joining it and there was another flight where passengers needed to get checked-in. Score!
It took about 30 minutes to get through the line and see an agent to check my bag and get my new boarding passes (mobile boarding passes don’t seem to exist in China for airlines or trains). With that out of the way it was time to head back to the Air China lounge for another round of bland food and less than delicious drinks after getting a second exit stamp in my passport from the same country in the same day. (How often does that happen?!)
To put into bullet points everything that happened today:
- Delayed and then cancelled flight
- Rebooked on a flight 8 hours later
- Confirmed business class seat on rebooked flight
- Checked luggage was the fifth one off the plane
- Short-ish line (but still time consuming) to get my boarding pass and recheck my bag
- Second helping of amazing Chinese cuisine at the Air China lounge, free of charge
Right now, however, the flight to LAX is delayed by a couple hours but fortunately not due to mechanical issues; the inbound aircraft is delayed. At some point LATE tonight (what day is it?!) I’ll make it to Seattle via LAX & SFO. Yes, it’s time for a tour of the west coast. Sadly I won’t be able to see the volcanoes on the way north past SF as it’ll be too dark outside.