We left for the airport around 3:30 for our 7PM departure to San Francisco. Weather was coming in and we wanted to get to the airport a bit early to get something to eat and relax before what would be 18 hours of flying. We had a great dinner at Rootdown in Terminal C (definitely add to your list of DEN restaurants for a layover) and were just finishing up when we started getting notifications that the aircraft scheduled for our flight (also inbound from San Francisco) to San Francisco was going to be late. No worries we thought - we had nearly four hours to make our connection at SFO.
What first was a twenty minute delay quickly became an hour. We grabbed the check and headed for the customer service desk to see what was going on. As we were making our way over to Terminal B, the inbound flight diverted to Las Vegas. I’ve flown almost 500,000 miles in the last five years and I can’t remember seeing a diversion for a reason other than weather or medical. The desk had no information so we made our way to the United Club where they had very little additional information. Soon the hour delay became two hours and we started getting nervous.
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| This is what a diversion looks like |
We worked with the absolutely fantastic team at the United Club to get our bag re-tagged onto our Singapore flight. We had consciously not tagged the bag all the way through as we wanted to get a few things out prior to the long-haul flight and wanted to make sure they were properly tagged at SFO. I trust Singapore ground staff a lot more than United to get that right.
It became clear that we weren’t going to be able to exit security but the team working this for us couldn’t get ahold of anyone in the baggage area. It was Christmas and a blizzard was rolling in…We were told that the diversion was due to a flight attendant seizure en route from SFO to DEN. That certainly put things in perspective and we can only hope that she is okay.
After another agonizing hour as the delay slipped to nearly three hours, we had pretty much given up that we were going to make our flight. That likely meant a night at a SFO airport hotel or worse since the day after Christmas is one of the busiest travel days of the year and finding a flight is near impossible. At this point the inbound flight from Las Vegas had landed and we needed to make our way down to the gate. Our bag still hadn’t been re-tagged to Hong Kong but the team helping us in the lounge took down our number and promised to call and leave a message either way. They were either going to get the bag retagged and we would have a shot to make our flight. Or they wouldn’t and our trip would be seriously derailed since we’d have to go to baggage claim which would mean missing our check-in time. We thanked them profusely and headed down to the gate.
By this time, people were pretty upset as their Christmas plans (either going home or headed somewhere fun) had been delayed big time. The airport was pretty dead except for the massive army of snowplows that kept the airfield clear and safe. Thank you snowplow drivers!!! Emily’s phone rang and it was the United Club team on the other end. “Ho Ho Ho…Merry Christmas…your bags are tagged to Hong Kong. Good luck!!!” Now we were at least in the ballgame.
15 minutes later we were on the plane. 15 minutes after that we were sitting on the de-icing pad. 15 minutes after that we were airborne. Based on the pilot’s estimation we were going to be at the gate at 11:25PM. Our departure to Hong Kong was at 12:05AM. 40 minutes to transit terminals. We pulled into the gate at 11:25 and were off the plane at 11:30. We had a mile to run.
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| We made it!! |
We were the first ones off the plane and we ran a solid 10 minute mile to the gate. Pretty proud of us considering it was 11:30 PM and we were both carrying multiple bags. We actually made it with about 10 minutes to spare. The first glass of champagne tasted REAL good…all is well that ends well.
We made it safely to Hong Kong yesterday morning after a great flight in first on SQ001. The bag ended up not making the flight but it should be here today. We did receive 800HKG (~$103 USD) in compensation which enabled Emily to stimulate the Hong Kong economy.
Thank you to the phenomenal staff at the United Club in Denver. Thank you for the Christmas miracle!!
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| Ready to go. Our ride to Hong Kong in the background |
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