Santiago, 16 hours late
I’m finally in Santiago Chile and sipping some coffee after a brief night of sleep. At least it was in a bed!
Selfie with coffee in Santiago
The trip started Tuesday morning as Julie drove me to SFO, about 75 minutes from our Napa home. I hung out in the United Club, had lunch, did some schoolwork, all while patiently waiting for a boarding announcement for my Houston flight. As these things often go, it started with a 30 minute delay, then 45, ultimately taking off maybe an hour after schedule. It was a mix of late arrival of the aircraft to SFO and crew scheduling issues.
My layover in Houston was only about 90 minutes so I was concerned. So were most of the other passengers. We made up time en route and I thought I had a good chance of making the connection, but we stood waiting for our gate to vacate for over 30 minutes. I think this destroyed just about every other connection as well.
United was prompt in showing me my booking options in the app. In fact, it started showing me in SFO as I was boarding on the jetway but the options shown were bad. And in Houston they were still bad: it was Tuesday evening and United was offering me a Friday flight to Santiago. This would blow up the entire trip.
Quickly jumped into a voice chat with an agent. Maybe this is obvious to folks, but I’ll say two things here: this is why I don’t check bags (rebooking optionality, not saving time on arrival), and get on the phone as soon as you can when trying to rebook. Don’t wait to deplane and go to a service desk. Especially if you are in the back of the aircraft like I was. You’ll be in line behind every other person that missed their connection
The agent was very helpful and I could tell she was as surprised as I was by the next-option-is-Friday situation. She found a flight the next morning to Panama City (Panama, not Florida) and a connection on Copa to Santiago 5 hours after arrival. I’d get in at 4am on Thursday morning.
After landing in Panama I went to the departure info sign and saw three flights to Santiago, with two of them in the next hour. Spoke to the gate agent, she directed me to the Copa office, and they found a spot for me on the next flight out. So I arrived at midnight instead, a huge difference as I was able to get to our AirBnB and get six hours of sleep in a real bed.
Today some city exploring then a 2-3am cab back to the airport to catch our early flight to Puerto Natales.