United Airlines: Plane And Computer Problems

Just before we left our hotel this morning, Kathy checked our reservations one last time and found that today's routing of DRO-DEN-SFO-SEA had been changed. Instead we were now booked DRO-DEN-SEA, due to a maintenance issue on one flight or another.

She called the 1K line. Before getting disconnected, the agent pointed out that we'd been re-booked into an illegal connection, i.e. with not enough time between flights.

She called again as we drove to DRO, and she eventually got us booked into an exit row on a 3:30 p.m. flight. The agent suggested we transfer to a noon flight out of DRO, but there was no point to that since we were checked out of our hotel and already on the way to the airport, so we have a layover to look forward to.

We've just gotten another UA Easy Update notice telling us that our DRO-DEN flight has been delayed a half hour due to the late arrival of the incoming plane. It's clearly obvious we would missed that 25-minute connection.

No announcement at the airport, of course, but the free Internet gives us something to do while we sit.

With all of its systems in place, United can still manage to screw things up. We'll be happy if we arrive at SEA at a halfway reasonable hour without any additional complications.