Today I have a very long flight delay. My flight is now scheduled for almost eight hours later than the original time.

This means that I will not have a Saturday this week. I will leave San Francisco on Friday night and arrive in Shanghai on Sunday in the very early morning.

When I left home I did not know that I would have a flight delay, but at the time I arrived at my office I found out that there would be about a 30 minute delay due to a late arrival of an aircraft.

On the way to the airport I received a notification that the flight was then delayed about two hours. Because of this I decided to stop at a vantage point where I could take some pictures of aircraft arriving at SFO.

The spot has a beautiful view of the San Francisco Bay and you can also watch planes landing and taking off at the airport.

In this picture you can see a group of people who had brought their lunch and had a picnic. They probably work nearby.

Here is a United 747 that is coming in for a landing. I have been on this approach many times over the years.

You can also see that the landing gear is in the process of deploying.

Here is the same 747 approaching the runway. You can see that the flaps and landing gear are down and that it is just seconds from touchdown.

Unfortunately, this was not the airplane that I would be flying on. The allocation of aircraft for the routes out of SFO was being juggled. I checked my app again  and found out that we were now scheduled to fly on a 747 that had arrived the night before from Frankfurt.

This was the case when I arrived at the airport and checked in, but about a half hour later I received another notification. I now had almost an eight hour delay.

I checked with the desk at the United Club and found out that this was a firm time as we would now be using an aircraft that is arriving from Frankfurt later this evening. The aircraft that arrived last night had problems with the cargo door and was not able to be fixed.

It is now time for me to go try and find my German colleagues as they will be arriving at the airport for their flights back home. See: Team Dinner

One last picture. Here is a view of the San Francisco skyline from where I was taking pictures of the planes landing. It was a bit hazy so the picture is not the clearest. However, you can see the general outline of the skyline.

I hope that my flight leaves at the new time. I will be ready for some sleep by then.

Hopefully I will be able to blog OK from Shanghai. The last time I visited there I was able to, but sometimes in the past I have not.

Steven