So we're all packed and ready to go. Our home is prepared for winter, a simple string of Christmas lights is up, ready to celebrate the holidays ahead and the Hootsuite hackathon is in Neil's ultra-capable hands. Nothing stands in the way of our 10:25am flight out of YVR to LAX to complete the first leg of our journey to Buenos Aires. Nothing but a missing confirmation email informing us of our flight departure time change.
We arrived at the airport at 8:30am to check-in for our flight as we were unable to check-in for the first leg of the trip online. Since we're flying United but the first leg is Air Canada this didn't really cause any alarm at the time. We approach the United counter and are told we probably need to check-in at the Air Canada counter because there are no United flights out until early afternoon. We go to the Air Canada counter and are told they can't bring up our record under the confirmation number so we need to go back to the United counter. At this point my spidey senses are tingling that something is amiss. Never before has it been hard to look up a confirmation number. Back at the United counter the agent looks up our flight and has a shocked look on his face as he says, oh, your flight leaves at 8:40am, they changed the departure time back in July... I look at my watch and it's 8:39am. I start to feel sick to my stomach and a million things go through my mind. "Oh fuckity fuck!" sums it up accurately. The lady at the counter asks "but didn't you sign up for Air Canada's flight notifications?" Well no, our ticket is with United and we can't log into Air Canada's site under that confirmation number. She asks, "well where did you book your ticket through." My answer, the Travelocity website. Her response, "ah, that'll do it." Our Travelocity confirmation and itinerary still showed 10:25am departure in an August update email even though the Air Canada flight was changed back in July to leave at 8:40am. Even the United web check-in didn't show us any departure information, seat information or anything for our first flight. All red flags in hindsight. While all this conversation, panic and the 5 stages of loss are going on, our Air Canada flight was roaring down the runway to take off for LAX without us on board. How many times have you sat at the gate while they are doing the last call for someone and you think, poor sap, they're missing their flight for whatever reason. Turns out, this time we were the poor saps :(
So what did we do? Well we just said, "to hell with it" and went home right?.. Of course not! Actually at this point I have to give United Airlines and it's contract staff in Vancouver a huge shout out. After talking with the agents at the ticket booth a bit about our situation, they were super nice to re-book our entire trip without any charge so long as it was places United would fly. Pretty open possibilities. United has taken some pretty solid punches on social media recently so I was tentative when booking United at the time but now I'm really happy I did. It was actually pretty fun to talk with the agents about possible places we could get to that day given we couldn't make our connection in Houston. At one point he said, well where would you want to spend a day. In the end we decided San Francisco is a good place for a one night adventure and off we went with new tickets in hand.