Houston Intercontinental Airport

I arrived at IAH and headed for the United counters in terminal A. As usual I could not use the self check-in facilities but had to be checked in by an agent. He printed the boarding passes and told me she could not precede the waitlisted upgrade for the segment ORD-SFO.

So I headed for security. I noticed that United like American uses the gates in the 20ies; this means I could not use my Priority Pass to enter one of the affiliate Continental Lounges in IAH. Security was a ten minutes wait, but nothing special.

While waiting for my plane I noticed several delays concerning flights at the east coast. I thought about the cold snowy weather in ORD and if it happened that my flight was delayed, too. As I had suspected, our flight was delayed and I would miss my connection. They expected an arrival time of 15:00. Passengers with connecting flights were asked to address the gate agent for rebooking. As my itinerary was IAH-ORD-SFO-SAN he tried to rebook me via DEN, but failed, as this flight was fully booked and I only hat to get on a waitlist and the flight to DEN was already running late at this time. After 15 minutes he asked if it would be okay to be rebooked on a direct flight on Continental, because this would get me into SAN for sure on Tuesday evening. But he could not do this at the gate, I should have a visit as the desk of his colleagues at the check-in and ticketing counters.

So I walked after twenty-five minutes at the gate to the check in agents. He could not book me on Continental anymore, as this flight was full, he tried again Denver and made several calls. He told me, he was advised to get me on a direct flight, as they were expecting more delays during the days. So he rebooked me onto American to DFW and then to SAN. I was told to visit the AA desk at the other side of the departure hall.

The agent at the AA desk was very helpful, but could not locate the ticket. He told me to go back and tell them they should transfer the ticket to AA, as this has not been done. So back again to UA. The agent had to made several calls to get the ticket transferred to AA, because another modification of the ticket was done earlier and he could not proceed it like usual. Finally after another twenty minutes wait, I finally got the confirmation that the ticket was transferred to AA.

The AA agent checked me in and I noticed the nice four S on my boarding pass. As if the delayed flight had not been enough trouble for this day. This time Security took a bit longer but at least one had a special line for queuing. Therefore this process did not take that much longer than the usual security check.

Arriving at Gate A 27 the previous flight to DFW was checking in because this flight was already delayed. And therefore passenger from the later flight, which had already a delay of 15 minutes were asked to board this flight.

I used this opportunity and get on the earlier flight.

12 February 2008
IAH – DFW
[Houston – Dallas Fort Worth]
AA 327 (American Airlines) McDonalds 82 (N266AA)
Gate A 27
12:00 – 13:15 [effective 14:15 – 15:27]
Economy Class
Seat 14 E

After a long time this was the first time in a middle seat and the first time on a flight on American Airlines.

Crew seemed to be relaxed; the flight was not completely full. The Plane seems to be in good condition, better than US and in the same shape than the planes of United.

We pushed back at 14:15 and headed for the runway where we had to queue. Safety demonstrations were done manually during push back.

We were airborne at 14:25 and climbed into the sky. Soon after take off the captain came over the microphone and requested all passengers to remain seated with the seat belt fastened and also the flight attendants. He expected some turbulence during the flight. The flight was indeed a bit bumpy, but nothing really big. So there was nod beverage service on this flight in both classes.

Other than that the flight was uneventful and we soon began our final approach into DFW, where we touched down at around 15:10 and reached our gate at Terminal C at 15:15.

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