A Near Miss On the Early Start

January 18, 2013
Eugene, Portland and San Francisco

I’m off!... well kind of... Today I flew down to San Francisco. When I originally booked Ben and my tickets to the Maldives and Hong Kong, United wanted an additional 40,000 miles per person to give us a reasonable connection in SFO. Since we had very nice international seats, I didn’t want to potentially misconnect in SFO because of poor planning or bad weather in Eugene. I also didn’t want to give up 40,000 miles for a plane ticket that I could purchase for $150. To that end, Ben flew to SFO early this morning for a meeting in the Bay and I left at 4P.M. to fly up to PDX before flying South to SFO. It was $100 cheaper to connect in Portland vs taking the direct and I get an additional 1,000 miles. Clearly it was a no-brainer. As an added bonus I got to have dinner in PDX with Ilsa.

Ilsa and I had a very nice dinner at Red Robin at Cascade Station. Two hours after landing I was back on a plane bound for SFO. We were slightly delayed prior to departure while waiting for six people who were coming in on a flight from Seattle. We were also delayed upon LANDING after having a near miss with a departing aircraft.

In all my years of flying this is the first time I can remember having a legitimate near miss. I saw pretty much the whole thing. I was looking out the window as I often do when getting close to landing. As our plane was about to touch down on the runway it jerked up sharply and I immediately saw another jet outside my window that had clearly come from a runway perpendicular to ours a mere second before we were to be touching down. The captain came on the intercom roughly a minute later and informed us that Air Traffic Control asked our flight to delay our landing for a takeoff from infrequently used runway one. Clearly the communication between the cockpit and ATC was amiss. Thankfully after a 20 minute delay we were on the ground safely.

Once I was on the ground my arrival in SFO was smooth sailing. Unlike the last time I visited SFO my bags were coming off the carousel by the time I made it to the baggage claim. I loaded up my stuff, made my way to the hotel shuttle queue and waited probably three minutes before it arrived, all while having a heavily broken up conversation with Bailey. I was in my hotel room at the airport Embassy Suites within 45 minutes of the time my plane got to the gate.

At the hotel I wrapped up my conversation with Bailey, said hi to my parents who had flown down on one of the direct flights from Eugene, talked with Ben about his day’s work, made plans for our departure in the morning and now I’m prepared to call it a night.

I’m SUPER excited about this adventure. The Maldives are supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. I loved my visit to Hong Kong with Joe in the early 2000’s, so I suspect Mom, Dad, Ben and I will have a great time there as well.

Until the never ending day(s) of travel tomorrow!
Katy