Singapore Airport Freakout

So yeah our ticket back to Indonesia had us fly first from Vancouver BC south to Portland Oregon where we would then transit onto a much bigger trans-pacific flight.

So  we're in portland airport and it is like 10 minutes to boarding time and I approach the check-in desk to see if we can maybe get a better seat with more leg room for the 11 hour flight to Tokyo. The clerk says "These boarding passes you have aren't good enough. I will issue you new ones." Ok I think fine. Who cares?

So then the clerk asks me if I have a return ticket to come back from Indonesia. No, I reply honestly.  "Oh but you have to have a return ticket otherwise we can't let you board" Just great! He confers with a colleague and she comes over and looks intently at the computer monitor hidden from my view. She says to the first guy "No, this rule is for visa on arrival passengers whereas this passenger (me) already has a visa" But they call in some security supervisor ("Red Code") to tell them what to do.

Meanwhile they start boarding!

So this woman comes and reads the rules on the monitor and says "You will have to purchase a return ticket before we let you board".  I am like praying my head off.  "Lord please influence their hearts and minds to interpret and use their discretion to let us on this flight! Please give me the grace to receive whatever the outcome of this is! Please grant me the discernment and creativity to navigate successfully through this!"

So there are like five passengers left in the line-up boarding and the rest of the boarding lounge is empty and the security supervisor says "No: looks like you are gonna have to buy a return ticket. Let me see your luggage claim tags" Oh no! I think to myself, She is going to pull our luggage off the flight! Then she says "Let me just read the rules again" The 3rd last passenger disappears down the gangway to board.  I feel inspired to stand up with our carry-ons and walk over to the gangway entrance like we are just about to board. I am standing in front of the boarding desk and the security supervisor is standing there staring at the hidden monitor.  She says to the first woman "They are going to have to buy a return ticket" The first woman says nothing.  So I feel inspired to stretch out my hand over the counter and point at the monitor screen that I can't see and say "But this rule only applies to people getting a visa on arrival in Jakarta whereas I already have a visa" At this point the first woman pipes up and says "That's right" The security supervisor then relents and says "oh ok I see. All right then. Off you go" And we are the last ones to board! Crud! Not the kind of excitement I need!

OK. So anyway they also said they couldn't print off boarding passes for the last leg of our journey from Singapore to Jakarta. We didn't know why, but they said we could just get new ones when we went to board in Singapore. Fine.

So we go to the boarding gate in Singapore airport (and it is like at least a kilometre walk way out to the end of this ridiculously long terminal wing) and ask if we can board with the e-tickets we have and they say no we need to get new boarding passes.  So anyway long story short here I am walking and running back and forth the one kilometre plus (so now my leg is killing me) from the boarding gate to this service counter trying to get this stupid boarding pass printed that Delta should have just given me. As it turns out, the Delta staff in Portland (yes, the same ones who didn't want to let us board without a return ticket) had completely changed our registered ticket number when they re-printed our boarding passes so that in Singapore they could find no record of our booking, and again this is 30 minutes before take off!! Argghhh!!!  But a very helpful young woman of a different airline very adroitly helped us by reconstructing our proof of booking from looking at our old boarding pass stubs (which Kathy had saved, precious woman that she is) from our previous journey legs and also from looking at our luggage tags which showed also that we were booked all the way to Jakarta.

Moral: DO NOT FLY WITH DELTA!!!
DO NOT ROUTE THROUGH THE STATES IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!!
GOD ANSWERS PRAYER IN TIGHT SITUATIONS!!