Friday September 19th, Travel Day

Friday was our travel day. 

We received our itinerary and it was as follows –

UA5199		6:24 p.m. Fri., Sep. 19, 2014 Salt Lake City, UT (SLC)	7:34 p.m. Fri., Sep. 19, 2014 San Francisco, CA (SFO)	Canadair Regional Jet 200 Fare Class: United Economy (S) Meals: None	Flight Time: 2 hr 10 mn
Flight UA 5199 is operated by Skywest Airlines dba United Express.
	NZ7		9:15 p.m. Fri., Sep. 19, 2014 San Francisco, CA (SFO)	5:25 a.m. Sun., Sep. 21, 2014 Auckland NZ (AKL)	Boeing 777-200 Fare Class: Economy (Q) Meals: None	Flight Time: 12 hr 10 mn
Flight NZ 7 is operated by Air New Zealand.

We spent Friday morning rearranging things in our bags and weighing them.  Every time we would weigh them we would get a different number.  Finally we decided that we would just go with what we had and hope for the best.

We had a delightful lunch with our daughters, Lizzy and Sara, and Lizzy’s boys.   After lunch we went home and changed into our official "missionary togs" and loaded all our bags into our son-in-law’s truck and headed to the airport.

Upon arriving at the airport we went directly to the United counter for the official weigh in.  No waiting in line – just roll those bags up to the counter and weigh them in.  Each bag was under the limit, with not much, if any, to spare.

50 lbs. or less

Ready to check in

After checking in our bags, we went through security.  Again very short lines.  Somehow Susan always gets the “TSA PRE” on her boarding pass so she is able to breeze through security.  Leave the computer and liquids in the bag, keep your shoes and coat on, just go through security.  Gary unfortunately had to go through normal security.

Due to the short lines we had arrived at the airport more than 2 hours early.  We sat down at Gate B5 and started the final wait.  About 5:15 PM an announcement was made,  "The gate for flight 5199 has been changed to B9 and would now be departing at 9:30pm.  Anyone who had questions would need to go to Gate B9 where they would take care of you."  We proceeded to Gate B9 and waited in line for our turn.  We learned that a pothole in the runway at San Francisco was discovered and Air Traffic Control had delayed  flights as there was only one runway at San Francisco available.  The final solution was to keep us on the flight at 9:30 PM and then fly from San Francisco to Sydney, then Sydney to Auckland. 

The departure time on the board kept changing.  Finally we boarded the plane and departed at 9:51 PM Salt Lake City time.  We arrived into San Francisco at 10:20 PM local time and made the mad dash from the domestic terminal to the international terminal.  Our flight was to depart from San Francisco to Sydney at 10:30 PM.  Upon arriving at gate 102 (the very last gate in the international terminal we found nothing.  Absolutely nothing!  Everyone had left the gate area.   There was no one there – the flight had departed and we would now have to wait to leave on Saturday night as there is only one flight a day. 

We were put back on the original flight at 9:15 PM on Saturday night and told that due to the fact that it was an Air Traffic Control delay that we would not be compensated with a hotel.  Church travel booked us into a hotel and we caught a shuttle to our hotel arriving at 1:00 AM PDT.  Fortunately we were able to leave our 4 large bags at the airport and only had to take our carry ons with us to the hotel.  

We dropped into our hotel bed exhausted.