Day -03 01/23/2019 Finally In Flight to Singapore

After months of waiting and planning, it was finally time to start our 2019 adventures. This first adventure would involve flying from Seattle to San Francisco and catching a direct flight to Singapore. We'd have a couple days in Singapore before leaving on a cruise on Holland America's Maasdam to Sri Lanka via Thailand, Maldives, and Malaysia before returning to Singapore. We spent 48 days on the Maasdam last fall as well as 56 days on it a few years ago, so we're familiar with the ship.

Yesterday afternoon after breezing through TSA security (despite the partial government shutdown), we left Seattle for San Francisco on a short Alaska Airlines flight. After collecting our luggage in SFO in terminal 3, we took the Sky Train over to Terminal G (International Terminal) where we quickly checked in, dropped off our luggage and breezed thorough SFO's TSA checkpoint to begin our 5 hour layover for a projected 10:45pm departure that would put us in Singapore 2 days later (Thursday) at 8:15am.

During our wait we enjoyed some very good Vietnamese Pho soup. Since we were there so early, very few people were in the waiting area for our United Airlines flight #1 at gate 97. Gradually more and more passengers arrived. Since we fly standby, I continued to monitor the available number of seats on United's excellent APP and there were plenty. As the time to board approached and the boarding process began, they still didn't call for any standby passengers. Finally after boarding most all the passengers, they called for the first person on the standby list to board. About 20 minutes later they boarded two more ladies, and kept interacting with another couple about being ready to board. But finally they announced that the flight was weight restricted, and no further standby passengers would be allowed to board. That meant 18 out of 21 standbys wouldn't be flying to Singapore this night.

It was now time to consider options many of which I had been mulling over as we waited. I knew there was a flight twelve hours later on Wednesday morning and it had some 80 open seats, and it would put us into Singapore on Thursday evening which was the same day as the previous flight would have. However, would they authorize enough seats to take standbys? There was also another evening flight but it was nearly full. Now I needed to find some over night lodging. So I used my Hotel Tonight APP and found a nearby hotel in San Bruno at the Gateway Inn & Suites for $125 which included a free shuttle both directions. I didn't expect much for that price but we just needed a clean and comfortable room. After retrieving our luggage, I contacted the hotel (it took two tries) and arranged for the shuttle. It picked us up and took us the few miles to the hotel where we checked in and were assigned room 311. They also required a $100 deposit which was charged to our credit card. We also made a reservation for the 8:10am shuttle back to the airport.

The room was very clean and neat and very much like an Ibis IKEA style hotel like we'll be staying in in Singapore. The room was pretty chilly but the heater worked to remove that. And we settled in while watching the Late Show with Steven Colbert. I wrote an email message to our Singapore Ibis hotel advising we would be there 12 hours later than I originally indicated. Then I began exploring our options in case we couldn't get on the morning flight. My final conclusion was that our best option was to attempt to fly out on UAL #29 on Wednesday morning, and if that wouldn't work, I would purchase tickets for the Thursday morning flight for $500 each less $100 each discount vouchers we received as compensation from our last UAL flight from Papeete when the entertainment system failed mid flight. If we took this option, we would forfeit one night's lodging as we would now arrive on Friday night instead of Thursday night.

With that completed, I plugged in and donned the mask on my new small and very portable Z-1 CPAP machine and immediately noticed the pillow was extremely hard and I also couldn't get a good fit with the covers. It was going to potentially be a long night. I comment later on this new very small travel CPAP machine.

Awaking in the morning at my 7am alarm, I felt that my overnight sleep had not been restful, but when I read the data on my CPAP APP, it showed I did have a decent night's sleep with low apneas. We showered, dressed, packed, checked out, and waited for our shuttle. It was timely and very full.

Arriving at the airport, we discovered that there was another standby couple on the shuttle with us from last night's attempt to fly. We quickly checked in (UAL's electronic check in is terrific) and headed for the gate. At the TSA checkpoint we discovered we didn't have TSA PreCheck on our boarding passes and there was a huge line in the regular TSA line, so we went back to the electronic check in area where a helpful agent assisted us in getting our TSA PreCheck numbers put on our boarding passes. Armed with our new passes we went back to the TSA checkpoint and quickly cleared it. TSA PreCheck is so worth it!

We made it to our departure gate #100 and found the other couple we rode in on the shuttle with. They were from Madison, Wisconsin and were heading for Phuket, Thailand for a 10 day vacation. The husband is a retired flight attendant and they were number one and two on the standby list. We chatted a whole bunch about travel and traveling standby as there were few other travelers around us as we were so early. Before the boarding process began, they were called up, and they were assigned the two remaining Polaris Class seats (fully reclining flat beds!). They indicated that we likely would make the flight even though we were 20 and 21 on the standby list. The flight was authorized to carry a full load of passengers and there were still some 80 open seats on our 787-9 Dreamliner (my favorite long distance airliner).

As I continued to monitor the standby list, I could see that seats were being assigned. Boarding commenced and the standby list continued to shrink until finally we were called up and given the choice of a full row back in Economy class or an aisle and a center seat in Economy Plus. We took the latter for the increased legroom and other benefits. Virtually all the standby passengers were assigned into Economy Plus.

Parenthetically, our flight benefits come as being parents of an Alaska Airlines employee. We've learned that many parents don't use the standby benefit as they can't deal with the uncertainty of not making a flight. Fortunately we are easy travelers and don't mind long flights plus I'm pretty skilled in searching out alternatives. One has to really think outside the box and be flexible when traveling this way.

We boarded in Group 3 and settled into our seats for the 17 hour plus flight direct to Singapore. Shortly after takeoff we were served a nice chicken and rice lunch and we were scheduled to have two more meals. I watched Diehard which has been on my watch list for some time and tried watching The King (about Elvis) but fell asleep during much of it. Later I composed this blog entry and watched a number of documentaries on the excellent inflight entertainment system. I tried to not sleep much so that I would be tired when we arrive in the evening in Singapore.

Stay tuned for the next part of our adventure as we arrive in Singapore and make our way to our hotel.