I arrived at the United counter at PHL to check in for my short hop to IAD before flying to Rio. The woman checking me in took my passport and stared at it for an inordinately long time, flipped through the pages multiple times, all the while scowling. I finally asked her if there was a problem.

Her: "You have to have entered Brazil for the first time within 90 days of getting your visa."

Me: "That's true."

Her: "I can't find any evidence that you did that, and you got your visa in October 2005."

Me: "Well, you've probably noticed that there are about 15 entry stamps for Brazil in my passport."

Her: "I can see that, but I don't see any that were within 90 days of when you got the visa."

Me: (shaking my head in total disbelief) "Let me see if I can help you find the first entry stamp"

It was located on the page directly opposite the visa. I tried again to explain to her that Brazil was obviously not having any problems with my entering the country, but she responded by saying that "it doesn't matter how many times you've been there if you didn't make your first entry within 90 days of getting your visa."

I just smiled, said "have a nice afternoon," and went to catch my plane.

A US Air counter chick once insisted I needed a passport to fly to Puerto Rico.

I wonder how most of them would do on a Wonderlic?

PHL is memorable because the TSA yeller (the one who's job it is to yell at everyone) had gang tattoo's on her neck.

Best time was boarding AeroMexico's Tijuana-Japan flight for TIJ-NRT-Saipan-MNL. The Tijuana check-in agent became profoundly confused by the Saipan connection, called a supervisor, who called someone from the back and the three of them consulted for 5 minutes and talked to someone on the phone. I am quite certain they never did figure it out but eventually decided "fuck it, US citizens can go most places, he must be OK for this place, wherever the hell it is" and they checked me in.

As for my first 90 days entry into Brazil, They apparently had a great ink shortage in Brazil at the time because the stamp is barely visible and for years I lived in fear some immigration agent somewhere was going to not see it and stamp over it.

Why did you not try the new PHL-CLT-GIG instead?

Because flying for an hour or two on US Air is about the maximum time any sane person can spend on that shitline. Over 9 hours on an international flight? No chance. The old 767-200s that The Scare flies to Brasil were dumpy 12 years ago and they haven't upgraded them at all since then. No Economy Plus seating, the narrowest seats around, no personal video (old projector system).

Cat's right. I got stuck on USAir from ORD-PHL and it was awful! Piece of shit equipment, rude service (yes, even worse than United), and lost luggage. My luggage arrived at my PHL hotel just hours before I had to head to the airport for the trip to Rio.

If you own stock in USAir, sell!