Justice revealed

On our way back from San Miguel we got to the Leon airport early and as these things happen we faced a flight delay; the plane that was supposed to take us back to Houston had mechanical troubles and had to turn back.   United began calling me (because I was in their highest category of fliers for the last 20 years - called 1K) with updates.    And after about 3 hours they offered us a spot on a flight that had originally been scheduled for three hours after our original flight - which had been rescheduled to a half an hour later than that flight.

When I originally went through the original check-in I saw a young man who seemed attached to his computer - it was open even while he was standing in line.  Eventually United got a plane there - indeed two and the gate agent came into the waiting area and announced that two flights would be leaving in sequence - our original flight would leave within a half an hour of the scheduled flight which was leaving on time.   The young man started to rant at the gate agent - yelling all sorts of things including that he had "taken away a day of my life that I will never get back."   He petulantly declared that he "had to get back to Chicago."  (As if the rest of us did not want to get back home.)

In the wait time we had met a couple of interesting people - a retired pipe fitter whose son and daughter in law were living in Guanajuato and an investment banker whose family had been visiting San Miguel.   All but the jerk understood that it was probably better to fly on a plane without mechanical problems.   We got on to the (now) earlier flight and were seated when we found that the jerk had been given the last seat on the plane.

When we landed in Houston, the jerk got off the plane and my wife said, "I hope you are feeling better."  He ignored her.   We went to the Global Entry line and took the usual 90 seconds to get through customs.   For all of his "sophistication" he went to the regular customs line which had more than 700 people waiting (several flights in addition to ours had disembarked at the same time).

If this guy had any brains he would understand that in air travel things happen.   While airlines try to treat their heavy frequent fliers a bit better - they cannot cater to them exclusively.  But he probably went home thinking he was a tough SOB and only his strong negotiating skills had enabled him to get into Houston a half an hour earlier.