when I walked out of the Hong Kong Airport it was at least hours. My memory has changed on the hours.

I arrived in SFO on time but then the 747 was delayed. They said there was a problem with the Jet Bridge. 1 hr delay became 5 hours with no explanation. Luckily I was flying First Class (they don't have it anymore) so I was in the first class lounge with a bunch of Apple engineers.

Then they reported that the plane needed to be switched out so we had to wait longer. However we finally took off at roughly 7 pm. We flew for 4 hours and then the captain came over the system and said that we were burning too much fuel according to their computers and we are showing that would be into our reserve by the time we reached Hong Kong but at the rate we're burning we wouldn't make it. He said that he could not tell if we were leaking fuel or the computer was wrong.

I looked at the map on my screen and we had already turned around. He then came on again and said he requested that we fly to Anchorage Alaska but United said no, take it back to San Francisco. We were off the coast of Alaska when we turned around.

We landed back in SFO at about 3 am with a parade of fire fighters and tanker trucks flooding the sides of the runway. We were told on the plane that someone would be there to greet us and issue us hotel rooms. No one was there. They pushed us all out to ticketing and back out of security. I was one of the first people off the plane and I was 3rd person in line at the counter to rebook. It took me 45 minutes to wait for 2 people in front of me to find an alternate route. I was just flying direct to HK where other people had connecting flights. There were only 3 agents at ticketing at 3 am with roughly 400 people in line.

When it was my turn the agent said I had already been rebooked on a new flight they created to replace the one we just landed from. However it wouldn't take off till 3 pm the that day.

They claimed they couldn't issue hotel vouchers because it was fleet week and there were no hotel rooms. That was a lie. However, I couldn't get my luggage from the plane because there weren't enough handlers to find specific luggage.

I went back through security and slept on the floor. United First Club Lounge did not open till 8 am. Once they opened I found a spot there to rest and sleep.

I believe the flight out was another 1 hour late. That flight was fine but the crew was completely unexperienced and didn't know what they were doing. Other than that I arrived in HKG 2 days after I left San Diego.

Here's a news story about it.