Our flight SAN-SJC boarded and the jetbridge was pulled back on time. The flight was about 2/3rds full - my guess is that, one, passengers no-showed the flight without cancelling and/or two, did not make it through the long line outside in time to get on board. The next hour was spent with the jetbridge coming back in and out - paperwork and communication being passed through only. The door never reopened and we finally took off.

We landed at SJC and were finally able to secure a gate. Based on my ticket connection time, I should have gone straight to the gate for boarding. Yeah, right.

Whereas the gate areas in SAN were calm and somber, the gate areas in SJC were busy and chaotic. It looked like a Thanksgiving with delays - no empty chairs, people huddled on the floor, in the walkways.

I went to the AC which looked much like the SJC AC I'm used to - busy, likely because the NRT flight was still scheduled to depart that day.

My 9:35 flight had been pushed back until 10:40. At 10:40, still no boarding. A 7:33 DFW flight was still waiting and it was finally decided that flight would go out to DFW empty and the DFW passengers would be accomodated on our flight.

Those passengers were ticketed at their old gate and immediately started flooding our gate agents with requests for F upgrades and seat changes to exit rows, etc. After about four people came up and got frustrated, they made an announcement that "all of the F seats and all of the *preferred* seats such as aisles, bulkhead, and exits were already taken". The line quickly evaporated to zero.

Again, long ground delays at the gate. Only one runway was being used at SJC when we did taxi out. Another runway was a parking lot of unused planes, mostly United.

Service was standard with two exceptions I noted - plastic utensils and screw top splits of wine in F.

Final thoughts: Leave plenty of time on the front, connecting, and back ends for delays. I now expect to book off entire work days for travel when making connections through hubs.

Be respectful of gate agents, FAs, pilots, etc. Most of these folks still look scared. Can you blame them? Many have done a tremendous job of now working many additional hours in an industry that does not, for example, generally compensate FAs for delayed or cancelled flights, even when they must dress and report to work.

Bring lots of reading material or busy work.

Above all else, remain calm and cool.