Sunday was a bizarre day. My flight to Chicago was supposed to take off at 1:39pm Mountain Time, so I arrived at the airport a little before noon. I was flying with 4 of the people in my start group as well. As the flight departure time approached, my friend and coworker Alex got this crazy idea into his head that he would offer to give up his seat if United would book him on a later flight (we were in no hurry after all) and give him a voucher for a free ticket.
True to form, United (which has horrible service according to many Accenture employees) overbooked the flight. I've never understood how this could happen so often in the digital age. But it does. I can't imagine a winning business model where flights are overbooked and then the airline hands out free round trip vouchers. That probably explains why the airlines all needed bailouts from taxpayers.
Anyways, all 5 of us volunteered to give up our seats in exchange for a free flight. We stood at the ticket counter for what felt like hours trying to get all of the logistics ironed out. The poor lady behind the counter had a heck of a time getting us another flight. First, there were only 4 open seats on a flight from Denver to Lincoln to Chicago. So she booked some of us to Lincoln and some to connect in Omaha. Then she was able to get us all on a flight to Omaha and then to Chicago. But then she realized that the flight was a Monday flight instead of a Sunday flight. Wouldn't work. So finally she booked us on a 9:30pm flight directly to Chicago.
By this time, it was 1:30pm. So, with 8 hours of time to kill, we settled in at a bar to watch sports. Some of us, including me, ended up hanging out in that bar for about 5 hours. Our time there was a little sweeter because of 2 things: 1) we saw a great Davidson-Kansas game, and 2) United gave us all $10 meal vouchers so our lunch was free.
Around 6:30pm, we were tired of the bar (and the bar was likely tired of us because all that was ordered the last few hours was a few beers). So we found the most deserted part of the terminal and considered watching Blazing Saddles on a laptop. That fell through, so we ended up watching hilarious YouTube videos. Finally, we had our 2nd meal of the day at the airport. I had a delicious Quizno's sub. Yum, yum, yum.
At 9pm, we finally boarded our flight and headed for Chicago. We didn't land until almost 1am Chicago time, and we didn't get to our final destination just outside Chicago till nearly 2:30am. What a day it was.
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