United Airlines.
Business Class
ORD – IAD (Chicago O’Hare – Washington Dulles)
UA778 – Business Class (D)
November 5, 2013
Booked: Airbus 320
Flown: Airbus 320
We left the Chicago United Club for the last time on this trip, burned up the rest of our food vouchers on Starbucks take-aways and located the gate for the positioning flight.
We had separate seats on opposite sides of the cabin due to the last minute re-booking so we sat apart and didn’t bother to try any last minute negotiations on board to switch with other passengers.
Pre-Departure drink service today was orange juice in the picnic glass.
Snack service was the warm scone presented in a similar format to the “freshly baked cookies”. The snack was okay but I was really hungry for a decent breakfast by this time.
I spent most of the flight sleeping as we’d only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before by the time we had settled into the hotel and I figured I’d probably want to stay up a bit for the long haul.
Some interesting mountain terrain on the approach in.
On landing in Washington Dulles, we approached UA Customer Service desks in Concourse C to try to check / prompt United on the status of the checked bags. The agent said that one bag was here at IAD “in the pit” and the other was missing in action. The agent sent us to UA baggage services for further investigation.
We left the tired and dark United concourse and went to United baggage services in the IAD domestic arrivals hall. We got an “I don’t know” answer. “You should check later in Johannesburg” was his useful suggestion. Is there any way to check now? “Not really. There’s 10,000 bags out there.”
Without any real resolution there, we decided to give up on the bags prior to leaving North America and went into the beautiful departures hall at Dulles to check in with South African Airways.
“I’m sorry I can’t check you in.” says the friendly check in agent at the SAA business counter.
“They’ve booked you on the flight but haven’t issued an e-ticket yet.” Oh boy.
We received an explanation that United had re-booked us but not re-ticketed us. I asked about the seat assignments that we had called about earlier this morning. “Yes, we have those but no ticket has been issued.” We were re-directed back over to the United check in desk where we spent the next 40 minutes at the counter there while an agent talked on the phone attempting to get our tickets “re-ticketed”. The reservations agent allegedly had to re-ticket ever segment of your 10 segment itinerary for two persons. Groan.
After that test of patience was finished, we returned to South African Airways with new e-ticket numbers on 016 ticket stock. This time we were able to check in again without any issue. Seats were assigned as promised. We were invited verbally to visit the Lufthansa Senator Lounge near Gate B51.
Finally, after 1.5 days of bouncing around North America, we were finally going to be on our outbound overseas flight!! If our troubles only ended there, we would have been happy. However, the test of travelling in Africa was soon to present itself again...