Driss-A-Blog

Today was the final leg of my nine week visit/training session at Google. The trip was arranged by corporate travel back in March: Fly from DTW to SFO in April, back to JFK in May, back to SFO in June, back to JFK in July. I got an email with all the travel plans and schedules, and I entered them all into my Palm.

Last night, I briefly looked at it. A 10:40am flight on Delta 1882. So I packed up, woke at 7am this morning, was out the door by 8, and at the ticket counter by 9:30.

I go to the e-ticket machine, and scan my credit card. It didn't find the flight. Hmm. What destination city? New York. It thinks for a little longer. What time is your flight? At this point, I can tell that it's really struggling, and when it finally tells me that it can't help me it was no surprise.

So I wander over to the paper ticket line, and get a clerk. Punching up my name came up with no ticket. Punching up my confirmation number did.

“Sir, we rearranged our flight schedule since you purchased your ticket. Flight 1882 is a 9am flight; that's what you were ticketed for. I don't know why they didn't contact you.”

He stood there for about five minutes just punching away at his terminal. I stood there, not really knowing what to say.

“United has a flight to JFK leaving at 11, and we have one at 1pm.”

“I'll take the United flight.” It's not that I had anything against Delta for this—I should have checked the flight information. It's just that I wanted to get home sooner.

He printed out my ticket and wrote an assignment on it to United. He sent me, with apologies, to the United counter, two terminals away.

I started walking. And walking. SFO has three terminals. Delta is in Terminal 1, United is in Terminal 3. Terminal 2 is a vast deserted wasteland of empty service counters, wide open floors, and a small display case holding trophies of some long-since-forgotten accomplishments.

I finally arrived at Terminal 3, and found my way to the very end, where the ten minute line to the paper ticket desk ended with me holding a ticket. “Just talk to the gate attendant, and he'll assign you a seat.” Gotcha. “Oh, your bag's 56 pounds. Do you think that you can get six pounds out of there?” I removed my toiletries case and the miscellaneous toiletries bag, and crammed them into my backpack. 50.5. Good.

One lone problem remained. Yes, I had a ticket obtained in the nick of time before the flight. On the other hand, United's security system realized that I was a traveler who obtained a ticket for a flight only an hour before its departure. Therefore, my ticket was marked with the dreaded “SSSS”. I was to be introduced to the joys of secondary screening.

Secondary screening is when they stop just short of the body cavity search. They don't ask you questions, like they do on El-Al. They just x-ray your carryons, run you through the metal detector, pat you down for weapons, and then methodically unpack every single bag you're carrying and swab everything within for explosives residue. I sat back, amused at the whole thing because a) it was something new, and b) I had no idea what time it was.

It was 10:30 by the time the screening was finished and I made it to the gate. I talked to the agent, got a real boarding pass, and then immediately boarded the plane.

On United, they have meal service. I didn't realize that when I got the ticket, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway since they can't deal with special meal requests that close to flight time. On the other hand, Delta doesn't serve food at all, so I ate the food that I'd packed.

An interesting note: What does the “Plus” in United's Economy Plus mean? It means an electrical outlet under every seat. I plugged in my laptop, started up MAME, and played Puzzle Bobble 2 all the way to New York, firing bubbles to their destination with the skill and grace that only someone who's spent far too much time at it could have.

We pulled into Kennedy just ahead of a thunderstorm, avoiding a long wait in the air had we'd been just a tad slower. On the other hand, once we were down, it was an hour and a quarter wait for the storm to subside enough for them to unload the bags.

Finally, by 11pm I was finally home. Whee!