I had a meeting in Austin last week. There's one non-stop in both directions between SFO and AUS, so I took it there and tried to take it back.

The return flight AUS-SFO leaves around 7:30AM. I got notified the night before the return flight (easyupdate) that the flight was cancelled (mechanical), and they rescheduled me on a UX Mesa flight to DEN, and then a 3-class 763 to SFO. The Mesa flight is a 50-seat RJ, plus it got me in to the bay area too late for my 1:00 meeting in the bay area.

So, I called, and they very nicely rebooked me onto a 7:30AM non-stop flight on AA to San Jose. AA1881.

When the cAAptain turned on the engines on the Super80 with LRTC and no audio system, some oil spurted out of the back of the plane. The explanation was that a mechanic overfilled it with oil. So they bled some off and a bit later we were on our way. After takeoff, the cabin started filling with a bit of smoke, and the passengers became alarmed. Even though it was probably the excess oil burning off, the flight crew did the safe thing for a commercial passenger flight and we turned around and returned to Austin. By the time we landed and pulled back to the gate, the smoke had cleared, but they ended up cancelling 1881 and put us on the 9:30AM non-stop to SJC. The first flight only had about 30-40 people on it, the 9:30 was full. I still managed to get a window seat on the second flight. The second flight arrived in SJC a few minutes late, but without incident.

Of course I could also talk about how much I hate SJC (the "new" terminal A must have been designed by people that have never actually been to an airport), but I won't.

How do you folks from Austin manage to maintain elite status with UA? As far as I could tell, except for that nice once a day A319 SFO flight (with those nice A319 seats, E+, movie and audio and channel 9), all the rest are long CRJ flights. I think you'd have to be pretty devoted to UA to do it.

-David