In the special mid-week edition of The Weekly Letter, I left you dangling - again. At the time, I was under the (don’t) care of United Airlines in Denver, Colorado.

“United,” Nazy interrupts, “had shirked responsibility. You were in Denver, under nobody’s care.”

“Precisely, my dear. And I had two heavy carry-ons: a few kilos of cheese, a couple of tons of chocolate, my laptop, my iPad, assorted wires and chargers, the iPhone, the Windows 8 phone, my earphones, my cowboy hat..”

“Cowboy hat?”

“I needed it when I arrived in Geneva, and I couldn’t pack it.”

“Wasn’t it hot?”

“It was very hot. I was hot (and bothered). I was suffering silently..”

“Silently, Dan?” Nazy interrupts. “You were complaining to me.”

“In silence, my dear. The battery on the iPhone was dying and I was sending text messages. Silent text messages.”

While I was bemoaning (silently) my fate, Nazy contacted Mitra to see if she knew of a hotel in Denver. Mitra’s SMS response ...

Working on it.

...didn’t fill me with confidence. I located a vacant row of chairs - a task that was surprisingly tricky. I concluded that United had stranded a lot of passengers in Denver. I tied my briefcase to my wrist. I curled my stomach over a chair handle and used the next handle as a pillow. Although I thought I would have trouble sleeping in this position, I was wrong. United Airlines had exhausted me. I could sleep anywhere in any position. I dozed off and then the iPhone rang.

“I have a friend in Denver, Dad.” Mitra explained. “You can crash at his house.”

“Really?”

“And Nick is a great Tango dancer.”

“Wonderful.”

“You should call him now. It’s getting late.”

“I’m trying to untangle my body, Mitra. I’m stuck in the chair. I can’t find my glasses and my phone battery is dying. Mom is worried about my luggage and..”

I extricated myself from the chair, massaged feeling back into my lower extremities and looked for my glasses. I couldn’t find them. I dashed back upstairs to see if I’d left them by Taco Bell or in the men’s room. No luck! I searched the carryon - pulling out a few baseball hats which I dropped into a clogged sink full of water. Mitra’s friend Nick called while I was wringing out the hats. He said that his mother would let me sleep at her home.

I found the glasses tangled in the iPhone charging cable. Eventually, I also found an ATM, got some money, located a taxi and headed into Denver to see Nick’s Mom. I arrived about 1:00AM - aware that I had to leave at 4:30 in order to climb the next hurdle that United had established. I fell asleep instantly.

After what seemed like a nanosecond of sound sleep, I woke up to catch the taxi. At the airport, I joined the a crowd of refugees being searched, irradiated and hassled by the TSA. Breaking protocol, I spoke with the guy in line behind me. He had also missed his flight.

“There is no slack in the system,” I explained. “Once you miss the first flight, they have no place to put you. Your chances of getting to your destination dwindle as time passes.”

“You’re giving them the benefit of the doubt. Once you’ve missed your flight..”

“I didn’t miss my flight, they cancelled it. Then they scheduled me for a flight that was impossible to make and..”

“Yeah, yeah whatever. Once they’ve screwed up, they know you’re mad. There is nothing they can do to make you feel good about the trip. So, why bump someone else - and make them mad too? They just continue to dump on you. It’s a plan.”

“You make a compelling argument,” I replied. “There’s just one thing. Your analysis is based on the supposition that United Airlines has a plan. I believe that since they have no clue, they have no plan. They don’t know what’s happening. They’ll probably ask me to appear in an endorsement video.”

I asked about my luggage when I got to the gate. The agent was sympathetic:

“That’s, eh, unusual,” she commented upon hearing my experience.

“Sympathetic, but ill-informed,” I thought.

“They’ve given you an aisle seat in the back row. Would you like to be closer to the front?”

“Please. And what about my luggage?”

“Normally, we send it with you, but in this case, I wouldn’t be surprised if the luggage made it to Santa Barbara before you.”

“Really?,” I replied, “I thought the luggage had to fly on United.” I looked at my boarding pass. “Wait a minute, this is a middle seat,” I complained.

“It is closer to the front.”

“One row closer.. and it is too ‘middle’ for my taste.”

“Have a pleasant flight.”

“I will - as soon as you give me an aisle seat.”

Amazed with my successful negotiation, I settled into the last row. The flight to San Francisco was smooth and uneventful. I had to take a shuttle bus (fellow passengers chipped in to pay the toll) from my arrival gate to the departure gate. And I only had to wait for two flights to depart before I was on my way. (The airplane was full of people who had missed the last flight to Santa Barbara.)

The airplane touched down in Santa Barbara..

“... local time is 10:02. I hope you don’t mind that we’ve arrived early.”

“Only United would use the adjective ‘early’ to describe a two-day late arrival,” I thought.

My luggage had not made the trip. I wasn’t surprised considering the new UAL motto:

United Airlines. We treat you better than we treat your baggage.

The clerk in Santa Barbara assured me that the luggage had ‘been located’ and would be on the next flight from Denver. I called central lost baggage (I had flown United before, so baggage claim was a quick click on the iPhone). My luggage, I was told, was ‘on the next flight’. When I got home, I checked the lost baggage web site (Google ranked as ‘busiest’, not ‘most popular&rsquo. The website indicated that UAL was working to ‘locate my luggage’.