We were at the end of a BNA runway, waiting for the first leg of our trip to Lyon to take off, when the notifications hit my phone. First Flighty, then United’s own app both lit up red. Our Chicago-Paris flight had been cancelled. Not delayed — cancelled. The plane broke, or as United put it “taking the plane out of service to address a maintenance issue.” Oh, and they’re really sorry.
So for now, as the plane rotated off the runway, all we knew was that we were going to O’Hare.
When the App Offers You “Stupid Travel”
My old road warrior reflexes kicked in. I paid United’s $8 for in-flight WiFi and started working the problem. The United app’s rebooking options were all variations on a single itinerary — ORD-SFO-CDG the next day. In other words, “We’ve cancelled your 8-hour flight to Paris and instead we suggest you fly 4 hours west to San Francisco, and then 11 hours east to Paris.”
Still, I booked it. I needed some sort of backup because I could see even these options disappearing with each screen refresh. More road warrior reflexes — grab the least-bad thing you can see while you work on something better. A bad confirmed seat is still better than a theoretical good seat.
Push Back. Always Push Back.
Then I hit every non-voice support channel I could find simultaneously: United’s in-app chat, plus a flaming Twitter/X post designed to get the attention of United’s social media team. Which it did. Once we touched down at ORD, I dialed the Premier Desk and was talking to a live agent before I was off the jet bridge.
So now I had three conversations going — app chat, social media, and phone — and in each one I pushed back on ORD-SFO-CDG routing. Every agent at the other end immediately agreed it made no sense. Not one of them defended it. They got us seats on the next day’s direct ORD-CDG flight which was showing as waitlist-only in the app. A human can open seats that the rebooking algorithm can’t — or won’t — touch. And when they do it, always say thank you.
In parallel, Irene was pushing too. Her phone agent seemed to lean into it a bit harder and found something more aggressive: ORD-IAD-DUB on United, then DUB-FRA-CDG on Lufthansa. I paused for more than a moment. Four flights? That’s way too many points of failure. But it would get us into Paris the next evening, cutting our delay from a full day to maybe six hours.
So, why not? Famous last words.
We raced over to the ORD-IAD gate and waited while Irene’s phone agent finalized the changes so the gate agent could check us in. We were the last ones boarding, so of course there was no overhead space left. They took our bags and checked them through to Dublin.
Status Still Matters
This was one of those times that reminds you airline status is more than just an earlier boarding group. It’s a lever to get your trip back on the track.
Every phone and chat agent opened with: “Thank you for being a 1 million mile flyer” and then worked with me as long as I needed. I never felt rushed; never sensed there was a timer flashing red on their screen, telling them to wrap it up and pick up the next call.
At the ORD-IAD gate, I could see status indicators next to our names on the gate agent’s screen and heard him mention our status when he called to get seats opened up for us.
Does status solve everything? No, especially not a broken plane. But does it help when your trip goes sideways, seats are scarce, and you need a human to do something the app won’t do? Yes, absolutely.
The Second Plane Also Broke
We landed at Dulles early; which felt like a small win that let us walk, not run to our next gate. We boarded the IAD-DUB flight, settled in, and then waited to take off. And then waited some more.
The pilot finally announced what we all kinda knew; it’s a maintenance issue. This time, it was something about the pilots’ cabin temperature regulation not working. Which I am very much in favor of fixing. I want the pilots on my trans-Atlantic flights to be as comfortable and focused as possible.
As we sat at the gate with the door open and maintenance crews moving in and out, I watched our Dublin-to-Frankfurt connection time shrink. Then disappear. I started searching for other DUB-CDG options but came up empty. Meanwhile the gate agent came on and told us that, by law, given the delay, they had to let passengers deplane and wait in the terminal. This was a decision point.
Stay on the plane and risk getting stranded in Dublin, farther from Paris with fewer options? Or get off here, stop the madness, and reset? I found an IAD-CDG flight leaving the next day, so we got off.
We told our tale of woe to the gate agent, who cancelled us off the Dublin flight and had our bags pulled. The gate agent gave us hotel and meal vouchers while I had a phone agent lock in the IAD-CDG flight. We finally sat down in baggage claim and caught a quick breath before our bags popped out on the carousel in front of us.
Give Credit Where Credit’s Due
Waiting for the hotel shuttle, thinking back over the past 9 hours — every single customer-facing United employee we dealt with was helpful, patient, and genuinely sympathetic. Not one was rude, or tried to brush us off, or hid behind “the system won’t let me.” They all tried their best.
I don’t know how much of that was training, how much was because of my status; but it mattered. It took a bit of the edge off of what was a very lousy day.
One More Problem: French Trains
We got to our hotel room at 12:30am but I still wasn’t finished. Our original itinerary was BNA-ORD-CDG on United, and then a 2-hour TGV ride to Lyon. But arriving a day later meant rebooking the train too.
I fire up the SNCF Connect app and get… nothing. OK, it’s early Sunday morning in France, but I didn’t think the French 35-hour work week applied to their mobile apps too.
Luckily, their web site decided to work the weekend and I started down the rebooking path — until I couldn’t go any further. Every CDG-Lyon train was sold out, from the noon train I was trying to rebook all the way through the last train at 8pm. A quick look at Google Maps told me the alternative — renting a car — would be a 5-6-hour trip. This just keeps getting better.
Back to the SNCF web site. I looked at the noon train’s route. One intermediate stop — EuroDisney. Maybe that was the problem; families flying in that morning have bought up all the seats. So I broke up my search — CDG-to-EuroDisney, then EuroDisney-to-Lyon. Found seats on an earlier train to EuroDisney and then seats on the noon train to Lyon. It would mean hanging around the train station for 50 minutes, but way better than 5 hours behind a rental car wheel. And maybe they’d have some decent croissants.
But what if I booked both legs separately but on the same train? Yup, it worked. CDG-to EuroDisney and EuroDisney-to-Lyon, all on the noon train. Why couldn’t I book it straight through as one trip? I didn’t know and was too tired to care. I just wanted to turn off the light and end this day.
What I’d Do Differently
I didn’t need hindsight to know that we should’ve cut our losses in Chicago and taken the next day’s direct flight to Paris. The ORD-IAD-DUB-FRA-CDG milk run had too many failure points and I knew it. It would’ve been much smarter to burn United’s vouchers on a downtown hotel, a couple of cocktails, and a good meal.
Note to self — you gotta break those old stupid travel reflexes.
Silver Lining: Trips to Udvar-Hazy and Ocelot Brewing
That said, we had a day to kill around Dulles, and we used it well.
First stop: the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the massive Chantilly, Virginia annex of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. It was a quick Uber ride from our hotel, and I’d always wanted to visit. But for all the times I’ve been through or around Dulles, I never could make it happen. Enormous hangars packed with aircraft and spacecraft — an SR-71, the Space Shuttle Discovery, a Concorde. I loved it. Figure a solid 2 hours if you like to read all the placards.
Then we continued our clockwise lap around IAD to Ocelot Brewing. Great beer, great place tucked away in some generic office park. The Uber driver asked us “How’d you find this place?”
“Years of practice,” I replied.
Coming Next: Lyon, Eventually
The good news is that this was not the whole trip. It was just the opening act.
Fate did give us one last head fake, though. Walking up to the gate for our IAD-CDG flight, we hear the agent announce “We’re going to delay boarding while the paramedics take care of an ill inbound passenger.” But when it was all done, we left just 30 minutes late and the pilot made up half of that on the flight over.
No problems at CDG passport control despite the horror stories circulating of huge delays caused by the new EU requirement to collect biometrics — face photos and fingerprints — from non-EU passengers. I think the French just ignored it.
And then my pieced-together TGV itinerary worked without a hitch. But I didn’t let myself relax until we’d stepped into our hotel room in Lyon and laid down for a 20-minute nap.
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