We play the game in the Denver Airport, our first stop on the route to Roatan. We are overnighting in Houston tonight and are booked on a flight that leaves Denver at 8:45 pm and arrives in Houston at midnight. Our flight out of Houston tomorrow morning is at 10:00 and if we arrive 3 hours ahead of the flight to get through security, we are not going to get much sleep.
There are two flights to Houston between when we arrive in Denver and when we are scheduled to depart. After deplaning, we check the board and the first flight is leaving soon, so we “Murray March” almost the length of the terminal to the gate. We ask the gate agent if there is any room on the flight and she makes a zero with her fingers. RATS! First strike.
Murray has the idea to go to the Customer Service desk for United and is rewarded with two standby boarding passes for the next flight. If we don’t get on that one, our original flight is still booked. If we board the earlier flight, we will be taken off the later flight. There’s hope. Murray learned that, with United Airlines at least, if we try to make a change in Edmonton, our start point, we would be charged the change fee. But once on the move, like in Denver, there is no change fee if we make alterations to our flight plan. Nice to know.
We have time before the next flight so we grab supper and people watch. Fascinating past time. A myriad of folks walk by and they are all the same, different, but basically the same. And then an enigma will walk by. A woman, athletic movements, bright sweat pants, fluorescent shoes, wild haircut. A standout.
The next United flight to Houston boards and then they make the call for the errant passengers. They call out four names. We are numbers 2 and 3 on the standby list. Looking good! After a few minutes they call our names and we go up. Since the plane is fully loaded now and we have largish carry on bags, we ask whether there is room for the bags. The fellow phones down to the plane and is told the overhead bins are full. So we have to check our bags, which is okay thinking they are only going to Houston. The fellow says he has to check them through to our final destination, which is Roatan. So that means we would not have the bags in Houston and they would sit in Houston’s airport overnight, with the potential of going missing. Exactly why we go carry on. So, thwarted by our carry on bags! We reluctantly pass on the seats and congratulate the guy who is number four on the list.
So here we are sitting at our gate waiting for the later flight. It was a game well played and passed the time between our flights.