11:30am
I decide to go to the check in counter in the transit area to find out about the possibility of being re-routed. There are 2 groups of people before me. There are 5 United staff at the counter but only ONE is assisting the first group. The other 4? Well, 2 of them are manning the machine where you put your boarding pass in. They are recording who is leaving the transit area and who is coming back in. One other staff is working on something on the other terminal and the last person is milling around answering questions.
The problem here is that the person that is actually helping the customers, she seems to be the supervisor or something and every 30 seconds, one of the other staff will be asking her questions and she will stop whatever she is doing to answer them. At times, she (apparently, since I can't see the screen) will be going away from whatever screen she was using to help the customer to whatever other screen she needs to answer the questions of the other staff.
12:30pm
I AM STILL THE THIRD PERSON IN LINE. Except that the line is now over 20 people long and there are many who are just outwardly bitching in line. United has not added a single other person to help. Everything is like it was an hour ago. 5 staff with only 1 helping the customers.
The captain of the plane is in the transit area and makes this announcement.
"This is the captain. I have already made this announcement on the plane but obviously to no one as all of you are here. The maintenance crew has replaced the 2 parts but that is not the solution. I have not been informed of anything else and will keep you updated as and when I get more info. I think we are moving on to Plan B right now."
Plan B???? Plan B should have been in place at 7:15am this morning when the maintenance people couldn't find the problem. I think we are already at Plan E or F... and if a company as large as United needs Plan E or F... no wonder they had to file for Chapter 13...
About 1:30pm. I get to the front of the line. I just say to the United person: "Tell me what you can do for me." It is very unlike me to not be yelling at her, but I don't think that would have gotten us anywhere except maybe kicked out of the airport. She starts working on our tickets, but as usual, she is interrupted every 30 secs.
We know that there is a Singapore Airlines flight at 5ish that afternoon and I request to be put on that flight. She nods. After about 15mins, she tells us that Jessica's name can be put on the flight but she is having problems adding my name to the flight.
The problem here and with ALL of Singapore's customer service... they don't communicate with you. Like this person, she spends 15 or so minutes working on something but not saying a word to us. After she tells us about the problem of not being able to add my name to the Singapore Airlines (SQ) flight, she spends about another 15 mins working on it but not updating us on anything. She finally gets up from her seat, turns around and tears off a print out. She hands us the print out which is all airline jargon. At this point, I'm still not sure if she managed to add my name to the SQ flight. I ask. She points to the print out... seriously, I still have the print out, I don't understand a f**king thing the print out says. Anyway, we confirm with her that we are on the SQ flight to SFO at 5:50pm and all we have to do now, is go to the SQ counter to get our boarding passes.
I was satisfied with the outcome because flying SQ was a significant upgrade to flying United.
We proceeded to the SQ counter which is about a 15-20min walk away.
It is now almost 2pm.
We get to the SQ counter and...
I am on the flight but Jessica is not. According to the SQ staff, United did not rebook Jessica on the flight even though their print out says they did. So, we decide that I will let SQ work on my ticket while Jessica returns to the UA counter to find out what went wrong.
When Jessica gets to the UA counter, she calls me. She puts the UA person on her phone while I put the SQ person on my phone.... and we get nowhere. Finally, Jessica agrees to fly separately from me as that seems like the easier solution. So, I would be flying SQ that day at 5:50pm and she will be leaving the next day on UA at 6:40am. We think that that is the best solution, we confirm it and proceed to have lunch.
While we are eating lunch, we decide that we will try one more time to either get her on the SQ flight with me OR see if I can fly with her on the UA flight the next day. This is going to solve some of the logistical problems like luggage and where I would stay the night, etc, etc, etc.
The line is forever long at the UA counter. And by the time she is next in line, it is time for me to check in for my SQ flight. I decide to just proceed to the SQ gate and if there are any changes, she can call me. Just as I get to the SQ gate, Jessica calls and says that United is able to let us together the next morning. I get her to double and triple check and the person says that it is accurate. It is now almost 5 pm. We have spent the last 12 hours at the airport and have not moved one inch from the island of Singapore. A very wasted day.
I get her to request for a hotel and transportation to the airport the next day. That is all provided for and according to the UA staff, we are to meet Muhaidi at the information booth at the Arrival level. Before that, we had to "offload" my luggage from the SQ flight. We also had to "check in" our duty free items, and pick it back up the next day. We also had to cancel our "exit" out of Singapore as we never really left the country and the person at the SQ counter was very, very nice indeed to help us with all of that. That included walking us to 2 different immigration counters to get paperwork done.
We then proceed to go look for Muhaidi. As you might imagine, since the day is already like that. There is no such person by that name at the information booth. In fact, the person at the info booth doesn't know what we are talking about.
Murphy's Law? You bet.
The person at the information booth is kind enough to call someone (at this point, any help is good, so, even if she made a personal call to God, who cares, as long as we got help, that was all we asked for). She then tells us we are to take a cab to Grand Copthorn Riverwalk Hotel. At the hotel, the staff will settle the cab fare.
We both do not know where this hotel is at, so, we just get into the cab and tell the cab driver where we wanna go. He tells us where it is at, makes some conversation with us. We are in not a great mood for conversation. We are still in the middle of trying to tell our parents that we have no left the country.
We get to the hotel. Jessica gets out of the cab first to go locate whoever is supposed to settle our cab fare for us. As I open my door, I hear the bell captain or somebody say: "Wrong hotel, this hotel is full." Seriously, at this moment, I am wishing this entire day is just one big nightmare and when I wake up, I am just going to... wake up.
The bell captain tells Jessica that the hotel is full from all the delay flight passengers and all further delayed flight passengers will be staying at Traders Hotel. I know where Traders Hotel is. It is right next to Jessica's brother's office. It is kind of right outside the heart of town but it's not like we were going to town that night anyway. We get everything squared away and then have dinner. Jessica's mom joins us for dinner. Dinner was probably our highlight of the day. It was a buffet dinner but it was a little extra special because the restaurant was serving a mother's day buffet and not their regular buffet. We had dinner from about 7:30pm to 10pm, for the first time all day we did something without having to rush and worry.
There was no information about transportation the next day but at this point, we were resigned to waking up at 3am and taking a cab to the airport. Just before we went to bed, we were told that we would be getting a wake up call at 3:45am and that the bus would be coming at 4:30am. The flight was at 6:40am. Jessica made sure she heard right because it didn't seem like we would make it in time but the person said it was going to be fine.
TBC
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