March 9 -
Not Again! At RSW
for our flight to Perth via San Francisco and Singapore Joanne’s booking pass
did not print out for the Singapore to Perth flight segment on SingaporeAirlines. During our long layover at San Francisco, agents for Untied and Singapore
Airlines each claimed the other airline was responsible thus making it our
problem, not their problem.
Conversing with a Singapore Airlines representative via
phone, I was reassured that the booking pass could be printed at Singapore
Airlines customer service counter at Singapore, not at the gate for our flight
to Perth and that our scheduled one and half hour layover in Singapore provided
plenty of time to get the boarding pass.
Our flight to Singapore left one hour late, typical for
this Untied flight, cutting our between flights to 30 minutes.
We have T Mobile phones that provide text service aboard
Untied flights. Somewhere high above the Pacific, United texted me to advise
that our flight was late taking off and that connection times could be tight. I
replied and behold actually connected with a Untied representative. After explaining our problem via multiple
text messages, he saved us seats on a later flight but stopped short of
cancelling our current reservations.
Sometime before landing, all the text messages
disappeared. How does that happen? I
tried to flag the head steward, a really big guy wearing a bow tie, without
apparent success. Finally, stopping in
front of us, he said you didn’t need to come to me, I am coming to you, we are
aware of your problem! He had a telex in his hand with our name at the top of
it with instructions to proceed directly to our next gate immediately after
departing the plane.
He begged everyone to remain seated when we landed to
allow passengers with tight connections to depart first. Of course, everyone
ignored him. Fortunately, we were seated only a few rows from the exit, so we
bullied our way out. Waiting for us, was a rep with instructions to proceed
immediately to our gate in Terminal 2 thru Terminal 1 about half a world away
from Terminal 3 where we docked.
Arriving a the gate for our flight to Perth with two
minutes to spare, Joanne handed the agent her “boarding pass.” Mystified, he
read “This is not a boarding pass.”
Another agent sitting in front of a terminal, waved him over and printed
her boarding pass straightaway.
We were on our way to Perth, our first encounter with
Singapore just a blur!
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