United DIDN'T hold the plane...

Well, last summer we had an amazing moment of the marketing matching reality when United held Tim's SFO-SYD flight so people on his belated Newark-SFO flight could make their connection. Fast forward a year and the very same thing happened but with an odd twist...

Tim's flight into LAX from Newark is an hour late. We then (happily) get an alert that the Sydney flight is also going to depart late. Upon landing at LAX they ask all Sydney passengers to raise their hands and tell them they have to make a run for it and everyone else on board should stay seated while they disembark. 

They rush to the gate, and... the door is shut, jetway pulled back, and the plane is leaving without them. They head over to customer service to see about rebooking and Tim's handed a new boarding pass for the Melbourne flight that's about to leave and lo and behold his Plus Points upgrade to Polaris (from Premium Plus) survived the rebooking and he ended up in row 12 behind Tyra Banks. 

Not sure exactly what happened in United's computer systems but at one point, the United app was showing him 4 different confirmation codes for MEL-SYD flights on both Qantas and Virgin. He decided to just get his bags, go thru customs, and head to the United counter to figure out where to go next. They rebooked him on yet a different flight, so he's headed home in a middle seat on Qantas in Economy. Luckily that happened on the 90 minute leg and not the 15 hour leg...