United® We Stand (Around Doing Nothing)

As we now enter hour six of our ordeal here at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix. We arrived at the airport a little later than we had planned and 5 minutes later than United Airline's cut off time for accepting checked baggage. The 'helpful' woman at the check-in desk said we could either take a flight an hour later through Denver and get on the standby list for connecting to Portland or take a much later flight through San Francisco. As she was explaining this to us, she received a notice that there was a mechanical problem with a flight somewhere that would make the standby option in Denver a poor choice. So, from a 10 AM flight through Denver (our original schedule) we were then booked on a 3:35 PM flight through San Fran. Thus began AIRPORT ODDYSSEY 2007 (part deux). Part one is here. Here's a representation of the event:


Then, as I went to buy some overpriced, but surprisingly tasty, pizza, I checked the departures list and saw that our 3:35 PM flight was now delayed until 4:30 PM. This means that we will likely miss our connecting flight to Portland.

So, what have we learned so far?

1. This will be the last time we will fly United Airlines. We're only flying them this time because we had a bunch of sky miles from when Sue used to travel so much. We seriously considered buying last minute tickets on another airline (Southwest) but the cost was prohibitive.


2. Raisins can hide pretty well in airport carpet.


3. A toddler requires less than 10 seconds to disable the computer at one of those airline service desks


4. Airline staff don't appreciate toddlers disabling their computers


5. If you are planning to fly out of Phoenix and have a rental car, allow at least 30 extra minutes to return the rental car and don't expect United Airlines to accomodate you if you miss their arbitrary 45 minute time limit before your flight


6. Most of your fellow passengers are very accepting of a toddler invading their space and messing with their stuff


7. Not so for airline employees


8. Milk can be a dangerous substance unless you purchase it from an approved vendor after you pass through TSA security check points


9. United Airlines doesn't exactly go out of their way to return lost luggage promptly. Okay, this happened last week on our flight into Phoenix but I thought it was relevant here anyway

Hopefully, we'll make it home at some point tonight (with all of our checked luggage) and we'll have a nice post ready tomorrow with lots of photos from our time in Holbrook to entertain you with.

Update: In the time it took me to write this, the flight to San Fran has been delayed an additional 20 minutes.