Saturday, March 10, 2018

Soundrail: The Return


From OMRS I headed straight to SeaTac airport, ran into a group of other Bay Area Soundrail returnees, went through security and headed to my gate. Well, at least I tried to.


I checked in at an automated kiosk and printed my boarding pass only when I got to the airport, so I didn't look at any monitors and went straight to gate N16 for my 7:55 departure as printed on my boarding pass. When I finally made it to N gates, I saw the announcement on the terminal monitors that my flight is leaving from gate C15. Huh!

At SeaTac, N gates is a satellite terminal, so I'd have to hop back on the airport train to get to C gates. I walked over to gate N16, and asked the staff what the deal is. 

"Oh, the terminal displays are run by the Port Authority, they are often not updated quickly when there are changes. I'm supposed to work your flight tonight, so I sure hope it's going to show up soon. Let me call and find out."

When she finally got off the phone, she told me 

"Well, it's neither. Your flight is leaving from gate N11 right over there. At least you and I don't have to walk to C gates..."

There was indeed a plane at that gate and the staff came over, too. So I sat down at gate N11 and waited with my boarding pass for N16 for a flight that was still shown to leave from C15 on the terminal monitors ...


The gate area was suspiciously empty when we started boarding, and they announced that we are not allowed to change seats even if there are other empty seats in order to keep the plane balanced. The plane was indeed half-empty.


2 hours later we're passing SFO. Almost home.


Instead of the usual arrival photo, here's the welcome committee that picked me up! What a nice surprise!


Soundrail 2018 posts: [Warmup] -- [Day One] -- [Day Two] -- [Day Three] -- [The Return]

No comments: