I had 4 hours for the transfer in Frankfurt, so I was pretty confident that this time I won't miss the flight as I did when I was flying via London.
Problems started when I took a taxi to the airport. There was foggy. Very foggy. Extremely fogy. I would say visibility was below 100 meters. We could not see our aircraft from the waiting room.
I thought the fog would disappear in an hour or so and optimistically went to the airport.
The checking proceeded without any sight of delays, but at the gate it turned out that no aircraft was going to depart or land until the fog goes away. Having ca. 3 hours of safety margin, I was calm. After 1 hour, the weather did not improve. They cancelled Munich flight first. Later also flight to Warsaw was cancelled. After the next hour, flight to Copenhagen. The crowd was getting angry :) I was getting anxious.
After 3 hours of waiting at the gate, I almost lost my faith that I would catch the flight in Frankfurt. Then they suddenly announced the boarding, although the fog did not go away whatsoever. It turned out that they really want to use the slot they got and from the start of boarding to the actual takeoff it took only a quarter or so. And on the runway it wasn't really better with the fog. I could hardly see runway edges while taking off. Taxiways were covered with clouds of fog.
We happily took off and after almost two hours (a few holding patterns near our destination) we successfully landed in Frankfurt. We touched down exactly at the moment the boarding to San Francisco was to start. I had bad feelings about me catching this flight. Luckily, I know Frankfurt airport quite well - I visited it hundreds times (really!) and often worked at it when I was developing software for Lufthansa for almost 6 hears. I did not know the exact departure gate before the bus took us to the arrival gate, so I thought there will be at least one additional security check (you know that going to US should not be easy...) and a passport control. When the bus arrived at the arrival gate, I had 30 minutes to departure. And I was at the different hall. And my flight was departing from almost the very end of terminal A. Then I used my eyes and brain and instead of going through passport control (which was the obvious choice as all the signs were directing passengers there), I descended into dungeons :) (better sings would be welcome) and run via underground passage directly to terminal A. It took me 5 minutes to reach it and after taking a lift upstairs, I emerged 200 meters from my gate. No passport control, no security check whatsoever. Great! I arrived at the gate while still 1/3 of passengers were queuing at the gate waiting for the boarding.
Done. Awesome Frankfurt. A huge airport and you need only minutes to actually transfer anywhere (last time I changed from an arrival gate at terminal D to some distant departure gate at terminal B in less than 15 minutes). And you know what: may luggage was also transferred. I actually heard that they are loading last pieces of luggage (my?) after they initially closed the cargo doors.
Behold Germany organization and a great design of Frankfurt airport.
After 12 hours or so (again with a few holding patterns near our destination and changing headwind/tailwind from -40 kts to+40 kts - quite bumpy moments) I landed in San Francisco International airport.
There I wanted to rebook my ticket to Vancouver. Just to postpone it by a day or two. First of all, it was hardly impossible to find ticketing counter just relying on signs. I had two ask a few people at the information desks and check-ins and their instructions on where I can rebook my flights were contradictory. Finally one guy correctly (?) directed me to domestic departure hall where I could find United ticketing counter and queued up there.
It turned out that two people in front of me spent 30 minutes each to buy their tickets. I was shocked. Still the worse was yet to come. A lady just in front of me and I myself spent almost 2 hours (two hours) waiting for United officers to handle bloody simple stuff. I was told that calculating the taxes for my newly rebooked flight took a long time (read: more than 1.5 hour). I could almost walk to Vancouver in that time... ;)
I almost wanted to give up (I thought they actually wanted to make me give up), but after almost 3 hours from arriving to the airport, I had my new tickets. Awesome? Rather frightening.
Se beware of United clerks. Really friendly, but quite helpless people.
Next time I'll fly with Lufthansa.
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