What’s it like in Beijing, you ask? Well, we wouldn’t know. Yet!

There was a lot of confusion and a little sass, but ultimately it boils down to this: United Airlines screwed up, and we couldn’t get on our 1:30 am flight to Beijing.

We arrived in LAX around ten pm, made our way to the international terminal, and all heck broke less. There were warnings of deportation if something was screwed up, adding a little pressure, but we figured that the airlines would simply fix it. After all, it was their fault. At one am, after some long phone calls – a couple of which involved one agent across the airport on my mom’s phone, talking with another agent on my cell – we realized that it was a no-go.

We found a hotel near the airport with vacancies and finally got checked in around 2:30 am, and my mom was back up at seven to spend another few hours being passed up the chain at United. At one point, she overheard the supervisor’s supervisor’s supervisor (probably) say on the phone, “we really dropped the ball on this one.” (I stayed with the luggage….ok, I slept in a little – but the luggage was there, too!)

Overall, it worked out – we are just delayed twelve hours. At one point, however, they had canceled all of our subsequent flights (our return home!). For this overnight delay, United offered us one $10 meal voucher each. That’s all. One agent on the phone told us to save our receipts and deal with United’s customer care later. In fact, you aren’t supposed to submit anything until after the flights are all over. Submission is exclusively online, by the way. Customers have to type up everything neatly after the fact, instead of being able to call a representative to fix problems as they are being encountered. You can draw your own conclusions about what it’s like to hear that at two am.

Everything already scheduled in Beijing was easily moved around, so it actually wasn’t that big of a deal. Just twelve hours out of a forty-five day trip, and a disappointing experience that will deter at least two frequent travelers from using United in the future.

update: we made it!