Oct 2012 - Texas Wedding

Flight #19 - United 1078 
Newark (EWR) – San Antonio (SAT) 
Friday, Oct 12, 2012  
Depart: 4:10PM / Arrive: 7:22PM 
Duration: 4hr 12min 
Aircraft: Boeing 737 
Seat: 12A and 12B (Economy Plus) 
Mileage:  1,569 miles
Lifetime Miles:  44,187

John, my father's friend from growing up, was getting married to a South Texas gal so we all decided to make the trip to Sandia, TX (about 2 hours south of San Antonio) to celebrate with them.

We were originally scheduled to fly out Thursday night at 7PM and my father was going to miss work on Friday since the only Friday evening direct flight was 4PM (meaning he'd have to leave work at 1PM to get home by 1:30PM so they could leave the apartment by 2PM to make it to the airport by 3PM before boarding at 3:30PM).  If he was going to miss half of Friday anyway, what was the big deal about a few hours Friday morning?

Flight Change #1
But as luck would have it, a month or so before the departure date, the Thurs 7PM flight got moved to Thurs 4PM.  Now missing work on Thursday as well as Friday was getting a bit excessive, even if it was for a destination wedding.  Combined with a very important investor coming in that week, things were looking pretty challenging for my father at work.  So he called United and explained he wanted to re-book on another flight.

Normally, changing a flight would incur a $150 change fee (per ticket).  However, since it was United's decision to change the original flight time, he was able to get the change fee waived.

His new flight was for Friday 5:40AM connecting via Houston and arriving into San Antonio at 10:18AM.  Painful!

But of course, my father had a plan...

Flight Change #2
As the date approached, he knew the important work meeting for that Thursday was potentially being pushed to Friday morning.  As such, missing all of Friday was no longer an option and (as he anticipated) work prompted my father to change his flight yet again to Friday afternoon.  That would mean he would have to drive 2 hours after landing.

But on the bright side, the new flight was direct to San Antonio.  And also, since work asked him to change his scheduled travel plans, they reimbursed my father for the flight change fees (including the fare difference). While not ideal, he did pocket a few thousand United miles for using his United Select credit card to pay for the fees.