Dodged a Bullet

We really lucked out/planned well for our first flight today. We made our flight plans for this trip on Air New Zealand. They partner with United, so our first leg of this trip, from Seattle to San Francisco, was on United. We were originally scheduled for the 4:27pm flight, which was scheduled to land at 6:28. Our next leg, from SFO to Auckland is scheduled to leave at 7:45. If everything were on time, that would have given is only an hour and fifteen minutes between our flights scheduled landing and our next flight's departure. Given all the possible delays of flying in/out of SFO, this stressed me out a bit.

It started stressing me out a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to call Air New Zealand last Tuesday to see what our options were to get on an earlier flight. Luckily, our tickets were transferable, so we only had to pay a change fee to change our flight. How much did we have to pay? $15 per ticket, $30 total. $30 for peace of mind. Totally worth it!!

We switched to a much earlier flight, leaving around Noon. I figured that if there were delays, they would pileup during the day, so traveling only an hour earlier may not necessarily help if SFO was experiencing delays. This would give us a five and a half hour layover at SFO, but we figured that was much better than the potential of missing our connection on our first flight. We figured we'd have plenty of time for a nice meal, and Dick could just work in the airline's lounge while we waited.

Boy, are we lucky we switched to an earlier flight!

Our flight left on time, and even arrived a few minutes early.

So far, the next three flights have all been delayed for more than three hours each! (The 12:51 flight shows as "in flight" right now, but it was 3 hours, 16 min delayed.) Phew!! Talk about dodging a bullet! Had we stayed on our original flight, we would have missed our connecting flight to Auckland. There wouldn't be another flight from SFO to Auckland until the same time the next day, so we would have missed our first day in New Zealand.

I'm so glad I listened to my gut early on this one. Better safe than sorry, and our whole vacation will be better for it. :)