Christmas travel

After reading about Richa’s airport nightmares, my travel story is going to sound tame in comparison. But this one has a happy ending.

I arrived at O’Hare on what was a very busy Thursday night after Christmas. Luckily the weather was cooperating. But here’s the thing: I swipe my credit card at the ticketing kiosk, and the machine says, “You cannot check in. Would you like to be added to the standby list of a later flight?” Say what?

Turns out I had arrived at the airport just after the 30-minute cutoff. It was 4:55, and the departure was scheduled for 5:20. The security line was moving quickly, I had no baggage to check, and my gate was literally 10 steps past the x-ray machine. Plenty of time, right?

Nope.

My flight was overbooked and they had given away my seat! Apparently all bets are off if you arrive less than 30 minutes prior to departure. I got stuck on standby for the 6:30 to Oakland. And as luck would have it, this flight was also overbooked, and the standby list was already 10 deep. I joined the group of people that migrated from standby list to standby list, hoping to get a seat.

After a few failed standby attempts, a United employee took pity on me and issued a brand new ticket with a seat assignment. She even put me on an SFO flight, which was much more convenient than my original Oakland itinerary. Not a bad seat either: row 18 on a 757. I was her last customer before the end of her shift. A Christmas present, perhaps?

Thank you, Miss United Employee! (And really, how often can you say that?) And it gets better: I earned mileage on this new mystery ticket, pushing me over the 25,000 mark and into Premier status for 2006. Outstanding.

I was so happy to finally have a boarding pass that I didn’t mind the baggage delays that kept our plane stranded on the tarmac for over an hour. At least I was going home. All in all, I lost about 4 hours.

Moral of the story: check in online and arrive early!