We booked United frequent flier tickets to France in October 2006, flying there and back on Air Canada through Toronto - since we called early enough we were able to get tickets the first time we called.  I read and re-read Rick Steve's France 2006 and France 2007 books pretty much cover to cover deciding how best to spend 22 nights in France.  I even checked out several books on Impressionist art and the Louvre from the library to get educated.  I ran my tentative itinerary by my Uncle Richard - he and my Aunt Jill have visited France many times and have been everywhere I considered going - I made a few alterations to the schedule, then finished booking hotels by March.

Sunday June 23 - two days before we left - I called Air Canada to verify our seat assignments.  I had called previously in the spring, so I considered this a formality.  The reservations agent started quickly rattling off different flight numbers and times than I had.  Air Canada had moved up the departure times of our flights coming and going to Paris by 3 hours, leaving us with not enough time to make connections in either direction.  She claimed they'd changed the times back in the fall, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed when I called before.  At any rate United knew or should have known, and they had my email address attached to these tickets, and they never bothered to tell me.  We would have been stranded in Toronto.  Air Canada adjusted the flights going to Paris but couldn't fix the return flights.  United then changed nearly the entire itinerary, routing us through Chicago going to Paris and through Washington returning from Nice via Zurich.  It was quite a nervewracking two hours on the phone fixing that mess.

After United re-routed us through Chicago outbound I remembered that flying through Chicago in the summer is not optimal. I checked the weather – predicted high in the mid 80s, no mention of rain or thunderstorms until Wednesday, and we flew Tuesday.