We flew from home to London in business class on Air Canada and had such a nice experience, we were actually looking forward to the long flight back to St. Louis, instead of dreading it. Aaahhh, to be so naive. What did we know?

Our trip home started yesterday when our alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. Rome time for our shuttle pick-up to the airport. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 10:50 a.m. with a 4:00 p.m. connecting flight from Newark to St. Louis that would get us home by 6:00 p.m. St. Louis time. After we arrived at the airport, we were told that our plane was coming from Newark and had been delayed due to thunderstorms, so our flight would be delayed at least three hours. That made it a close call for our connecting flight, but it turned out to be a moot issue because we left three hours and forty minutes late. As we were waiting to leave, we talked with some other passengers. Two of them had spent two days trying to leave Rome on United because their flight had been cancelled. The earliest flight they could get was this one–with another delay.

Ok, we got on the plane, took flight, and landed in Newark without incident. We had business class tickets for the flight home as well, but we quickly learned that United’s business class is not much better than coach except we had more leg room and might have had better food. (Our food wasn’t great, but I don’t know what they served in coach.) Not to mention that United’s business class seats are arranged in groups of facing seats, so half of the business class passengers fly backward–including us.

Because we were in business class, Ted and I were the third and fourth people to get off the plane. We hustled to the United customer service counter to re-schedule our flight to St. Louis, and were next in line for an agent. During the flight delay, several of us had been looking for possible connecting flights, but since we didn’t know when we’d be leaving, we couldn’t schedule anything. The next possible flight for us to take was at 10:00 p.m. and indicated there was one seat left. Luckily for us, we made our flight arrangements through our cruise company (Viking) and they were keeping tabs on us. When it was our turn to speak with an agent, she said, “It looks like a company named Viking already reserved seats for you on our 10:00 p.m. flight,” and she printed our boarding passes. Thank you, Viking!

Unfortunately, United wasn’t finished tormenting us. We had repeated delays for our flight home. First, there were thunderstorms in Newark, so the airport was closed. All planes on the tarmac were de-boarded so passengers could shelter in the terminal, and that threw every following flight off schedule–at least for United.

Another announced delay informed us that the crew flying us from Newark to St. Louis was late. When the crew finally arrived, we learned that the pilot had flown too many hours and United needed to find another pilot. (Didn’t the pilot or anyone else check how many hours he’d be flying today?) While we were waiting for a pilot, United announced six flight cancellations. Thank goodness, our flight wasn’t one of them. We had time to get something to eat and, while we did, we saw the United customer service line after the cancellation announcements. The continuing delay announcements became so ridiculous, Ted and I laughed when we heard them. I think we were giddy with exhaustion by then.

Around midnight, we were finally told we could board the plane, but we still couldn’t take off, and this was the dumbest excuse of all: Our plane couldn’t be pushed back from the gate because the planes on each side were so close, we’d hit their wingtips. Good grief! Airports have painted lines on the tarmac for the pilots to steer their craft to the gates. Didn’t anyone measure the distances between the painted lines???!!!

We left the gate–thankfully, without hitting another plane–at 12:42 a.m. and arrived in St. Louis at 3:00 a.m. (10:00 a.m. the following day, Rome time), after nine hours of delays for two flights. Ted and I were so exhausted when we got home that we showered (we’d been awake for 28 hours) and fell into bed. We slept 30 hours during our first two days at home. After that, we went shopping for e-bikes, just as we’d planned.

Never, never fly United. I contacted Viking, thanked them for looking out for us, and advised them to schedule their passengers on other airlines.