My trip started with a not so early 8:00AM trip to Seatac airport. I arrived before my travel partner so I checked in and made my way to the United Lounge. The lounge was new, adequate and modern. I ate a quick meal of fruit and granola along with coffee and water.
My travel partner arrived an soon it was time to depart. Our short 2 hour flight to San Francisco went without issue. We left the airport and traveled into town to go shopping since we had a nice 7 hour lay over.
We didn’t want to miss our next flight so we planned to leave down town around 4:45. We arrived back at the airport and headed to the United First Class Lounge. Shower was on the priority list, food and then drinks. We enjoyed the atmosphere waiting for our boarding time. Around this time we got our first piece of bad news. Flight delayed until 8:30 due to maintenance. I was ok with this. I’d rather them fix the plane on the ground then attempt to fix it in the air. So we continued our stay in the lounge. Then the next set of news came. Flight delayed until 9:40. The plane was taken out of commission and we were going to be flying on another plane that will be arriving soon from Asia. Again I’m satisfied with this news.
While standing in the boarding line and the time approaching 9:40 the gate agent made an announcement. They had to retire the original crew due to FAA time regulations. They were in need of 3 more crew members and they will give us a status soon. Flight delayed until 10:11 PM. Soon a flight crew member arrived and the crowd went wild clapping. Moments later another one arrived and again clapping. The time came and passed 10:11PM. Then at about 10:30 the gate agent made another announcement. “We tried hard to find a new set of crew members. We found all but one member. At this time we are going to have to cancel this flight.” I looked at my flight partner and suggested we get out of here NOW! We walked briskly to the First class lounge and then were followed by all of our other first class mates. My flight partner worked our flights with the agent… for 1.75 hours.
The problem: We had a flight to Frankfurt and was to arrive on Sunday around 10:30 AM. We would then stay the night and then fly to Paris at 1:05 PM on Monday. We would then arrive Paris around 2:30 ish and then take a 3:00 flight on another airline from Paris to London. Our rebooked flight put us in at 12:59 PM. We would then need to clear security again and board a new flight to Paris that left at 1:05PM. THIS WAS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. If they put us on a later flight we would then miss our flight from Paris to London. So we were negotiating a change in our flight to SFO-FRA then direct to London. Apparently this was a headache and it took 1.75 hours to do.
This big change was satisfactory to us. Our ticket from Paris to London was in Village class (AKA Coach) and we were restricted to 50lb’s of luggage each. OOPS. However Because of this I was talked into NOT taking a carry on luggage with me. Which is totally against my traveling rule. But I didn’t want to pay an extra billion Euro’s for my carry on. So I just stuffed extra Socks and Underwear in my backpack. But that was it. Instead of paying for a hotel in Frankfurt for the night we each got a free hotel room near the SFO airport. We also received $14.00 in vouchers for “Food”. We questioned the agent and asked “What can we get for $14.00?” She then offered to give us another $7.00 voucher which we gratefully accepted. We will also put in a request for compensation for missed opportunities for travel.
We headed off to the Embassy Suites and arrived near 12:30 AM. We took our vouchers and went to a little dinner on the corner. They accepted our vouchers and we had dinner. Then went to bed.
JetBoyErik 
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