SFO: The first real standby challenge

The JFK-SFO and JFK-LAX flights are the businessman’s specials on United, with big comfortable planes, good food, wifi, and all the benefits American air travel usually lacks. My initial itinerary tried to take advantage of this as much as possible, and in some cases I routed myself unnecessarily through San Francisco in order to take more of these premium flights.

My first such attempt at this was the journey from New York to Calgary, which saw me spending a quick overnight in SFO on my way out of the country. Because it was an international flight and I was booked in first class I was able to blag my way into the elite lounge in JFK, enjoying free wifi, comfortable seats, and free fruit and coffee until taking my seat on the plane and watching the sun set to the south. It reminded me of the many times I’d flown towards LA after a trip home, and made me think about how my life has changed since then.

SFO was nearly asleep when I landed at 22:00 but I had a little time to explore before most places closed. By 1:00 it was quiet. There’s a 24-hour Subway just outside security, but otherwise everything is shuttered. Even the music overhead stops. It’s not a bad place to sleep, though I took advantage of the free wifi to catch up with things overnight. I was scheduled to fly out at 8 the next morning; I could sleep on the plane and still be able to enjoy my first day in Calgary.

The first cracks started to show around 5:30. SFO wakes up promptly at 5:00am, the overhead music coming on and passengers starting to trickle in through security. I found an outpost of Blue Bottle Roasters where I bought my first cup of good coffee since leaving Dublin, grateful for the caffeine that would give me enough of a boost to get me onto my plane where I could sleep for a little while. Staying up all night had been a little tricky, but it would be worth it.

You can imagine, then, my disappointment when I wasn’t able to get a seat on the SFO-YYC flight. I revised my plans, the gate agents rolled my reservation over to the 12:09 flight, and I wandered off in search of breakfast. I watched the boarding totals for the 12:09 via my mobile, and started to worry as I saw the numbers tick up from something sensible and hopeful to something implausible. There was still a shred of hope, though. As the revenue passengers boarded there was one seat open. Two people were ahead of me in the standby queue, but they had the same surname. I scanned the boarding area and spotted them, an older couple. Maybe they’d prefer to travel together, and I could get that seat.

Just before takeoff the announcement came over the intercom, “Could all standby passengers for flight 6348 please approach the podium.” We did. The gate agent looked at the couple and explained, “I only have one seat left—” and was cut off by the female half of the couple pointing at her husband. “He’ll go,” she said quickly. And that was that.

The frayed strands of my nerves started to break. I’d looked at the boarding totals for the 20:08 flight and although there were two seats open I’d watched enough flights fill up to know my chances of getting onto it were slim to none. The woman tried to reassure me, saying her son had been watching the flight and that we’d be able to get onto it. I didn’t have the strength to disagree, so I smiled politely, made sure my reservation had been rolled over, and proceeded to wander. It was too bright and busy to sleep, so my frayed nerves did not get mended. I kept myself awake with more coffee. I wrote postcards and bought stamps and walked a lot.

When neither I nor the other woman made it onto the 20:08 flight, she looked surprised. I was not, and, to my shame, did not have the grace to resist an “I told you so,” conversation. At that stage I was looking at a second night in SFO, my Canada plans were in shattered ruins, and I had no idea how to salvage the situation. Even when my brother chimed in with a list of red-eye flights and capacity numbers, I was incapable of piecing together a plan.

Sleeplessness and caffeine do not make a person better able to handle changing circumstances.

My brother finally managed to slap some sense into me from afar, reminding me that I would sleep on a red-eye flight and could regroup in a different city. I picked the city with the most open flight (Boston) and quickly routed myself back to DC via Houston. That this required a half-hour connection in Boston struck me as perhaps an interesting choice, but something I could handle. I made it happen, adjusted my bags so that I’d be able to make the connection as swiftly as possible, and staggered to the assigned gate to discover my fate.

The only thing that rocked my sleep-deprived brain was securing a seat assignment on the SFO-BOS flight and finding myself on a plane, seatbelt on and ready to go. The shock registered for the briefest of moments before I passed out, dead to the world through takeoff, hurtling towards the east coast under a night filled with stars.