They started boarding the flight on time, but eventually stopped. At some point, they realized that the plane, which had been sitting at RDU overnight, had two items missing: a trash container (the kind that gets strapped into the galley) and an exit sign for the door by the galley.
Because of this missing exit sign, we could not fly! The airline (United) checked all over our plane, then asked all other airlines at RDU if any of them had an extra Exit sign.
None did.
Instead, they did find an extra Exit sign at the Newark airport, and had that flown on the next flight in from that airport.
It worked, but our flight ended up being 3-1/2 hours delayed - for a missing exit sign.
I get it. I know the airlines have to be really strict with safety and security. Fortunately for us, ours was a direct flight. A lot of people had to work out other flights since they would be missing their connection at SFO.
After we were finally in the air, one of the flight attendants told me that three different airlines had something like this happen on their planes when overnight in RDU over the last month. Some kind of bizarre sabotage?
Anyhow, we made it home, just a few hours late. United apologized for inconvenience and offered free inflight Direct TV to all passengers. That was nice.
The missing sign
The replacement Exit sign- 3-1/2 hours later! (As modeled by our cute flight attendant) :)
Update
I received an email from United Airlines yesterday, apologizing for the flight delay due to maintenance issues.
As a "Goodwill Gesture", I was offered a $250 E-Cetificate for any United Flight! :)
Thank you, United!!
PS: Dick received the same email from them yesterday. When he filled his form out, he was offered $150 flight voucher. We/he was pretty happy with that, until he found out that they offered me $250.
(Christopher says that they must like me more.) ;)
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