We Begin Our Travel Day @ ADB

Our travel day got off to a start with news of a change to our schedule. Not necessarily an unexpected one, however. I will explain below.

Wanting to be on our way to the airport [ADB] by 7:15a, we were up at 5:30a this morning … I needed time to launder the bed linens and towels before we left. I was in the midst of doing that when Mui said that he had a text from UA advising that our IAH-COS flight tomorrow had been canceled and that we were booked on a flight through Denver instead. Bummer! The reason? Not weather-related issues forecasted to plague the Rockies. Rather, crew-related scheduling issues due to the fast-charging Omicron variant.

Frankly, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was expecting this. With Omicron taking over the COVID-19 cases, airlines have been canceling flights left and right since before Christmas. It was too much to expect that we’d escape the disruptions. But there was no time to deal with the changes at that point, so I backburnered it until we got to the airport.

The silver lining of this longer-than-anticipated return home? We can sleep in tomorrow morning since the new flight is not until after noon.

Anyway, as planned, we were out the door a little before 7:15a. The taxi Mui had ordered was already parked at the curb. In no time, we were on our way to ADB. There was quite a bit of traffic and some light rain falling, but we made decent time arriving at the airport.

With the help of a skycap, we got our bags through the security checkpoint at the entrance to the terminal and headed to THY's BizClass counter. That’s when we learned that we could have asked the cab to drop us off at the CIP entrance available to BizClass passengers, thus bypassing the first security checkpoint. Oh well … now we know.

In any event, there was no queue at the counter. The agent quickly checked our PCR results and vaccine cards, tagged our four checked bags through to Houston, Texas, issued us our boarding passes, and directed us to the CIP Lounge, located beyond the security checkpoint that allows passengers access to the gates.

The lounge, where we are at present, is all but empty … a good thing during COVID-19. We found some comfortable seats and a nearby table for a quick bite to tide us over. I just tried to use the UA chat app to see about getting our pre-assigned seats on the new flights changed … after all, we paid for E+ seats on the IAH-COS flight we’d originally booked. Alas, the wait time is over an hour. No surprise! I imagine we’re not the only ones trying to deal with changes to their flight plans. I’ll have time to deal with this when we get to İstanbul.Read more