Once I decided to go, about three weeks out, I then faced the great Flyertalker Conundrum. What is the optimal routing from SFO to MAA subject to the following constraints?
- Maximise travel on UA in quest for Million Miler Status
- Maximise use of Star Alliance airlines
- Maximise EQMs and RDMs
- Minimise cost
- Minimise distance between seat and front of aircraft
- Optionally minimize days off work
- Maximise exposure to aircraft and/or seats never previously flown in.
I quickly realized that my brain was not manufactured by Cray, Inc, but hunkered down anyway to explore my options. With no NC space available on UA to anywhere on the planet, things weren’t looking great, and given the paucity of options, I finally settled on SFO-HKG-SIN, which was showing C9D9Z9 and looked fairly open on the seatmap. This was a direct contravention of my oft-stated preference for booking via NRT to maximize upgrade chances, and a folly that I would eventually, with the benefit of some twisted logic, get paid for.
Having established that I would wind up in Singapore, the next question was how to get to Chennai. This was a real tough one. The flyertalker in me came out swinging for the fences, and the rational argument for taking any number of non star alliance flights that would get me into Chennai in the middle of the day was very quickly suppressed. Instead, I found myself booked in business class on TG via BKK, on the A340-600 and A300-600. New airline, new airport, and two new aircraft, in business class, for the same price that SQ wanted for the back of the bus. The power of constraints number 5 and 7 is not to be underestimated!
72 hours prior to travel, I was performing my regular morning routine of repeatedly checking my upgrade status with waking up, showering and eating breakfast strategically interspersed, when I noticed 2 NC seats open up on SFO-NRT. At the same time, there was no longer a seatmap available for my SFO-HKG flight. This must have been how Donald Trump felt when making the final decision on whether to run for President or not. Indeed, there was no doubt in my mind – time to switch to the Tokyo flight.
I called in to do just that, and boy did that work out well. I asked what was going on with the HKG flight in C, and was told that C was 97% full. It was only after the call that I realized that with a 52 seat capacity on a 747-400, C could either be 96% full, or 98% full, but not 97%. Go figure. Anyway, I had no problem switching over to the NRT flight, with upgrade confirmed. Better yet, a W-fare was available, the difference swallowing the change fee and then some. Can there be a more satisfying, albeit admittedly pyrrhic, victory for a flyertalker?
Departure Day
A long trip started with a long morning during the course of which I ably demonstrated that vegging out in a metal tube for the next day or so was probably about as much as I was capable of at the time.
I started the day by participating in a corporate summit meeting on the East Coast. After checking the status of my NRT-SIN upgrade, of course. I was the only virtual participant, and had scheduled my presentation up front so as to not interfere with my travel plans. However the fact that I was talking at a time at which I am usually sleeping (no commentary required, Mrs Cricketer) became very obvious when my brilliantly constructed dry witticisms went down about as well as Jeff Smisek’s assertion that we will like his changes at United.
I had asked a friend to pick me up at 9am, with the specific intent of getting up to SFO and clearing security in advance of a 10am call that I needed to take. Twiddled my thumbs impatiently until about 9:15 when my frustration boiled over. I expressed some polite opinions to my wife about my friends’ sense of time, and picked up the phone to call him. The conversation went like this:
Me: “<name redacted>. Where are you?”
Him: “I’m outside your front door. Been here since 8:50am. Just come out when you’re ready”
Me: “*!&#(@**! Did you think to call me?”
Him: “I called you when I got here”
At which point I duly noted that my phone was in silent mode. In an effort to transfer some of the blame back to him, I should point out that it seems odd to me to sit outside my front door in your car for 25 minutes and not call again or ring the doorbell.
At the Airport
As tends to happen these days, my NRT-SIN upgrade had cleared after check-in, so on the drive up I kept my fingers and toes crossed that nothing funky would happen to cause it to disappear. There was no problem at the check-in counter, other than the agent repeatedly asking me if I was sure I wanted to waste a precious SWU on the NRT-SIN sector. I didn’t even bother getting into a discussion – figured I would just check later and make sure that 2 didn’t get pulled from my account.
After breezing through security I made my way over to the SilverKris lounge, which continues to be rather spartan by SQ standards, but wonderfully peaceful compared to the RCC. There were just 3 other people there, and the lounge agent said that they only get a few UA passengers in each day. Unfortunately, no outrageous conversations to report this time!
After a few nibbles and a cold drink at the lounge, it was time to head over to the gate. The monitor had UA 837 to NRT marked as departing from Gate 101, so, with some thanks to the powers that be for the extra exercise, I headed down to the end of the terminal. As I passed Gate 102, I noticed that the gate monitors were showing that it was hosting the SFO-TPE flight, which was marked as “RETURNED.” Wondering what exactly that meant, I continued onto Gate 101.
The first thing that struck me as odd was the absence of an aircraft at the gate. Very rare to see “Boarding” on the monitor when there’s nothing at the end of the jetway.
Then I noticed that instead of the usual throng of gate lice and other artifacts associated with the red carpet, there was actually nobody there. The gate area was a barren wasteland – not quite dystopic, but pretty close. I was totally perplexed. I walked back to the monitor near Gate 102, and sure enough, SFO-NRT was supposed to be at 101, and the “RETURNED” SFO-TPE was at 102. Only then I noticed that people were boarding via 102, which didn’t fit with the “RETURNED” status.
And then it finally twigged. SFO-TPE does not currently exist in the United system. But SFO-NRT-TPE does. That was my flight! And I had missed the opportunity to board ahead of the unwashed masses!
ready for boarding