Well, that was disagreeable.
This is a minor followup to:
- Doh! Got to the Airport a Day Early to Find my Flight Delayed Four Days
- Finally Got My Return Flight Rescheduled
- Continuing Saga of My Return to Japan: Flight Canceled Again
Despite all the weather problems airlines have been a victim of late, it's pretty obvious that my two canceled flights were not canceled because they were directly affected by weather. Heck, the first flight saw the whole route canceled for four days, as if one could magically know the weather four days hence. No, I think it was a business decision to make better use of the equipment they had on hand. Probably a smart business decision, since Chicago (where that first canceled flight went instead of Cleveland) is one of their major hubs, but nevertheless one that hurts folks who had a perfectly good plane yanked from their route.
I didn't complain to them the first time. I have more than 450,000 actual flight miles on United Airlines (equivalent to 84 transpacific flights) over the last 25 years, so I've got somewhat of a sweet spot for them in my heart, and am probably more willing than the average person to let things slide.
But doing it — canceling my flight for their business convenience — the second time yesterday was enough for me to contact them to at least ask whether they'd consider some kind of class or luggage upgrade as a token gesture.
Just contacting them to even try to talk about this was daunting. They offer no customer-service phone numbers on their site, so you must go through a web form.
Okay, so I filled in all the details, wrote my max-2000-character description, and submitted it, only to be met with the error: “Your email address does not match. Please reenter”. Uh, doesn't match what?. Perhaps they used to have the kind of thing where you have to enter your email twice, but currently there's only one place to enter it (and anyway, I'm logged in to my Mileage Plus account, so they know my email).
A search on the web showed others with the same frustration.
So I left a note on their Facebook page reporting the problem, and asked for a phone number I could use. They actually responded with it (877-624-2660) pretty quickly, but by that time I'd tracked down the number via calling their Mileage Plus office.
So, I called United Airlines Customer Service and talked to Rose. Rose conducted her job professionally, which means to say that she firmly (but politely) told me that all these problems were weather related and that I had no claim. She kept referring to the weather department as “a very special department”, as if it were some kind of magical place where we can't begin to understand what it does, but its decisions are the holy grail of truth never to be questioned even in the back of our minds.
“But Rose, they canceled the flight four days in advance (and conveniently then used the plane to service Chicago and its much worse weather instead of Cleveland). Are you suggesting that they somehow knew the weather in Cleveland four days hence?”, I asked.
“Yes, of course, it's a very special department, and they take safety very seriously. We take safety very seriously at United.”, she replied.
(Imagine, if you can, all this said in the same quick no-nonsense voice and cadence of Bernadette on Big Bang Theory, and you'll have a complete picture of my experience.)
I don't like to be a complainer, but I got the short end of business decisions made by United for their own convenience, twice, so I thought a gesture of an upgrade or an extra bag or something wasn't too much to ask for, but Rose, always polite but always firmly rooted in “it's a very special department”, waved the word “weather” as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
I asked how yesterday's flight from Akron to Chicago could possibly be canceled for “weather” 10 hours before the flight, when both airports were running normal operations throughout. "Its a very special department who makes those decisions and we don't question them. United takes safety very seriously."
Anyway, to make a long story just a bit less long, I eventually got bumped to Caroline, a supervisor, who listened much more sympathetically, but never allowed that any of it would seem even slightly fishy. And even if she believed that I was correct, it turns out that there's nothing she could do... I'd have to submit my claim via the (not-working) web site.
Caroline said that she'd report the web-site problem and that I should try it again later, but I didn't hold much hope that it would be fixed nor that even if it were that it would make any difference, considering the “weather” designation on my cancellations. But I did check the web site later and it was fixed, so I did submit my note. Not holding my breath, though.
So in summary, I just screwed myself out of a couple of hours of my life, and into enhanced frustration and exasperation with an airline that I've used for 25 years. It's not unexpected, of course, but still disappointing.
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5, slightly cropped — 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000 — image data
Beauty in the Details
it's not much from afar, but pretty nifty when you view the full-resolution version
Here are some more frost patterns from arctic Ohio, following up from the one I posted the other day. It was -10°F (-23°C) with strong biting wind when I took these, by hand, outside in the wind, up hill both ways. According to the image data, I lasted two minutes 10 seconds before I couldn't stand the pain in my fingers any more and gave up: considering that I had heavy insulated gloves, it's a testament to either just how very cold it was, or how very wimpy I am. Probably both.
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000 — image data
All Roads Lead Home
( sappy, I know, but I wanted to have some label with which the photo can be referenced )
I tried a variety of processing on these to mix things up. They're all essentially monochromatic, except something behind the window sometimes showed up as a brown splotch in the background, so I turned those to black & white, and while I was at it I used Lightroom's half-tone feature to make the “white” (of “black & white”) on some of them (such as the one leading this post) slightly blue.
On the other hand, the next shot is shown in all its full-color glory...
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5, heavily cropped — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000 — image data
Parallels
I really need to figure out some kind of jig or brace so that I can use my favorite macro lens handheld in the field, but with more stability than just holding the lens freehand.
I'm pretty steady with the camera, but when these photo were taken — maximum aperture at maximum magnification — the depth of field was thinner than the ice crystals I was photographing. That made it extremely difficult to hit focus in the first place, but even worse, any slight off-axis tip would mean that only part of the image could possibly be in focus if at all.
That's why some of these shots are pretty aggressive crops; even if the frost pattern is interesting, the photo is not interesting if half of it is out of focus, so in some cases I cropped out a lot. In the shot above, 60% of the original is cropped away. The photo below has 55% of its original cropped away.
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5, heavily cropped — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000 — image data
Evergreens on a Slope
When my fingers couldn't take the cold any more, I did take the trouble to step back and get a shot to show the context....
There were other windows, each with completely different kinds of frost patterns. After warming up my hands, I went out again with the camera for a short while, and repeated the cycle (so probably this is a “to-be-continued” kind of post).
For those hanging on the edge of their seat as to my travel schedule, here's a short followup to “Got to the Airport a Day Early to Find my Flight Delayed Four Days” and “Finally Got My Return Flight Rescheduled”....
TL;DR version: Canceled again.
I was supposed to leave Akron Ohio this evening, but United Airlines canceled my flight (again), and not due to weather (again). Both times now it's been canceled well in advance of the actual flight. My educated guess is that they decide they need the plane more importantly elsewhere.
Anyway, the current schedule now is to go out on Sunday night, stay in San Francisco on Sunday night, leave from San Francisco on Monday morning, and arrive in Osaka on Tuesday night.
We'll see.
Update: big thanks to the hotel I'd booked for my overnight in San Francisco, The Dylan at SFO, for allowing me to move my reservation to the new day even though it was past their cancellation-cutoff time.
Update: on a whim I took a look at the how the Chicago→SFO flight I was supposed to be on is doing, and see: “Estimated Departure 1 Hour 38 Minutes Late (Delayed - Cargo loading)”. Ugh, glad I missed it, I guess.
Update: now it's “2 Hours 13 Minutes Late (Delayed - Aircraft servicing)”. I guess I shouldn't be surprised... looking at that flight's history on FlightAware.com, it seems to rarely be less than an hour late getting out, often much more. It looks to have gotten away on time only two or three times in the last month. Ugh.
"Statistically, when taking into consideration sample size, standard deviation, and mean, this flight is on-time more often than 0% of other flights." — flightstats.com giving it the worst possible score in on-time performance.
Watching the connecting flight I'm supposed to take on Sunday get more and more delayed (now almost three hours), and considering that it has almost a 0% on-time rating, I just changed my reservation to a direct flight out of Cleveland. It's less convenient, but less chance of stranding me.
Half an hour ago it said "Departed Gate 2 Hours 35 Minutes Late, taxiing to runway (Delayed - Aircraft servicing)", but it still hasn't taken off. Glad I switched.
Final? update: it took 45 minutes after it took off (and after FlightAware.com started showing realtime data) for United to update the status to “in flight”.
Sort of a followup to “Catching Air on a Snow Sled”, this is another post of pictures from a year ago.
Playing on the lake behind my folks' place in Ohio, Anthony used an old spade as a hockey stick, and a chunk of ice as the puck....
I liked the shadow and asked Anthony to hold the pose for a few shots...
This last one has had the saturation turned up to exaggerate the blue from the sky showing in his shadow. (The blue is not seen except in the shadows because the direct sun overpowers it elsewhere.)
Back to this year's trip and the present, today started warm (10°F / -12°C) and by the evening was almost up to freezing (30°F / -1°C). After my return-flight woes earlier in the week, I'm hoping tomorrow's flight back to Japan (via overnight in San Francisco) is smooth....
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000 — image data
Frosty Window
(now we know where Dubai's layout came from)
Despite having heavy insulated waterproof gloves, I could handle the camera for only three minutes outside in the -10°F (-23°C) deep freeze that Ohio and much of the US had yesterday. It was just too painful for my fingers. The heavy, gusty, biting wind certainly didn't help.
(Today was different; 20°F (-7°C) never felt so warm.)