Last night I watched the Boeing Starliner re-enter from an (Airbus) Airliner over southern New Mexico. Here's a photo and video shot from a plane window with my phone (!). The story of how I was there involves amazing luck. I was flying from Tampa to San Jose, but when I looked at my earlier flight it was packed full, so I found I could get a flight landing 50 minutes later for $22 less with lots of empty seats. I switched, but it turns out the two legs (on two planes) were tagged with the same flight number and it took half an hour on the phone to make things work. I was regretting it but took it.

Then in Houston I got a first class upgrade so feeling better, but the plane was too empty and the rebalancing software was crashing so they spent 45 minutes figuring it out old-school. Due to that delay I learned from Kathryn Myronuk that the trajectory of the Starliner should come close to my new flight. At first we were going to miss it but the tarmac delay had us intersect it perfectly. I informed the flight crew, who announced when they saw it coming over Mexico. I was on the starboard side but due to the light plane I went back to coach to grab a port window for a great view in dark skies. Amazingly my phone was able to capture it to a small extent. Bad luck turned into good luck!

As the vid shows, that "streak" is not the trail on the imager of a fast moving meteor, it is the ionization trail that hangs in the sky after the satellite heats up the air. It is interesting how, at the end of the ionization portion, the trail breaks up into little pulses, presumably periods of greater heating or small bits breaking off?

Later analysis of my position and the path of the satellite suggests amazingly precise timing, nobody else in the world, except on ISS, may have been in such a position to see this. Makes me almost wonder if the pilots faked the delay but couldn't admit it!

About the flight change and "direct" flights

Here's a rant at United over how my flight change went. I asked it to see alternate flights and it offered several, including the one via Houston which came with a $22 refund. It allows you to see the seat map (which is what mattered to me) and it showed both legs with plenty of availability, including my ideal, which is an aisle in economy plus with an empty middle next to it, and somebody at the window. (This empty middle is then very unlikely to be taken unless the plane fills completely as my prior flight had.)

So I "bought" the new flight, but when I checked in it didn't offer seat selection. When I went to the reservation to do seat selection it showed a completely different seat map, with just a a few seats left (none in Economy Plus) and I thought I had screwed myself.

I called customer support, and after the usual delays when it asks you if you want to do it by text message (not if complex) and whether you will take a survey, I found an agent. She was able to see the proper seat map, so I asked for a seat and it seemed fixed. However, checking I found she had booked the opposite side (with an empty window, meaning a couple might be placed in the empty pair) and that while I was first for an upgrade on leg 1, I was not on the waitlist at all for leg #2. Since the load was light, I wanted to be on that list as an upgrade was likely (and did indeed happen.)

The reason was this. Both flights had the same flight number. This classes the flight as what is known as a "direct" flight (rather than a non-stop flight.) Normally, a direct flight involves the same airplane landing and going on to the next destination. In the old days, you might want a direct flight because, while you had a stop, sometimes you didn't have to get off the plane, and your luggage would definitely stay on the plane and have no chance of being lost during the stop. In addition it meant there was no way you could miss your connection, even if you did have to get off the plane.

Today, it's different. A lot of these "direct" flights actually change planes. Your luggage can get lost. 2 years ago, I even missed a connection on a "direct" flight because my first leg was so late they sent out another plane. To make it worse, a direct flight with a stop counts as only one "segment" towards elite status, and today those segments are fairly important for those who salivate at elite status. (Which I do -- it is the elite status that got the free upgrades for me and the ability to have them answer the phone to fix problems quickly, and the free access to the extra legroom section.)

This time, the direct flight mixed up the computer real bad. It's possible that the reason I got that seat map with just a few seats is it was trying to show seats free on both legs, which of course doesn't matter when it's a "virtual" direct flight that changes aircraft and even aircraft type.

I don't know what made me not be on the upgrade list for leg #2. The agent put me on hold for 25 minutes to fix it. And I got the upgrade (barely) so it was worth it, though on a light flight I could have had a whole row in Economy Plus which is better than first class in some ways, though first class gives you a meal and better service, and other features on some other planes. In addition, while I had be #1 on the waitlist (with 3 spare seats) for leg #1, I got switched to 9th on the first leg, so no upgrade. This wasn't a rush of Global Services (top tier) passengers, it must have been another computer error.

United really has to work out the bugs here, or it should just get rid of the idea of a virtual direct flight which is really just a connecting flight in every way. In fact, often a real direct flight can have a long layover, so you don't really want it.

On this flight, of course, the half hour on the phone, and the hour on the tarmac were totally worth it, but usually they are just a pain.