Flying the unfriendly skies of United

December 22, pre-dawn, 6 A.M. the black town car appears at our door to whisk my wife, son, and me to Newark Liberty International Airport. We were flying to Sioux Falls for Christmas with our family.

Miraculously, we get through security by 6:45 and get to the gate to O’Hare by 7 A.M for our flight to Chicago, which we are supposed to board at 8:30 A.M. at United Airlines Gate 6, due to depart at 9 A.M. (EST), arriving in Chicago’s O’Hare at 10:34 A.M. (CST). The flight time was to be 2 hours, 34 minutes, distance 719 miles, UA279, Fare Class United Economy, snacks for purchase, no special meals. Are you still with me?

There’s only one hitch. It seems a piece of the cockpit computer is broken that tells the speed of the plane. It’ll be replaced as soon as the new part from the other side from other side of the huge Newark airport arrives. In fact, waiting for and replacing the computer part took an hour and a half, which means we weren’t in the air until 11 A.M. (EST), to get an 11:55 A.M. (CST) flight to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We didn’t arrive at O’Hare until 12:30 P.M. (CST). Unfortunately, no one notified United at O’Hare to hold the plane because of our delay. And that flight took off as we arrived. Bye bye, schedule, I think I’m gonna cry.

So what did we do? My wife debated with the United Airlines service agent for an hour for another connecting flight. My wife mentioned Sioux City, which is an hour away from Sioux Falls. The agent immediately said, “No, we don’t go to Sun City.” My wife repeated, “No, it’s Sioux City.” The agent said, “We don’t fly there anymore.” “My wife said, “Yes you do. We’ve come in there several times.” My wife reeled off a list of nearby cities from Kansas to Nebraska, and the answer was no to each query. The agent finally woke up and said, “Er, yes, we could put you on standby for the 5:25 P.M. or the 6:30 P.M. flight to Sioux Falls.” Miraculous, I thought, the service agent actually has a brain.

My wife had to spell out the words S-I-O-U-X C-I-T-Y to the agent who finally got it right. The agent said “Ahhh, we do have a 7:25 P.M. flight to Sioux City, but it would be on American Airlines.” My wife agreed to that. Yet, there was another hitch to this madness. We had to sync our tickets with United in order for American to print our tickets out as boarding passes. On top of all of that our baggage was on the 6:30 P.M. United Flight to Sioux Falls; yes, that was also delayed.

We finally got to sync our American Airline tickets to only find out that our plane to Sioux City, IA, was delayed an hour and a half. Between all of this, my wife contacted her sister who lives in Sioux Falls to informed her again that we weren’t going to arrive at Sioux City, IA, until 10 P.M. This was the worst case of airline flakiness I had seen in years. Now that we had the possibility of those American tickets all we had to do was wait another hour to get our tickets and another hour and a half to board and depart. In between the waiting we stuffed ourselves with hot dogs, pizza, ice cream, peanuts and oversized sodas. Christmas or no Christmas, my 24-year-old son, Michael, said, “Bah humbug to this.” My wife said not to be negative and to stop my grousing.

Well the American Eagle flight finally took off at 8:45 P.M. Central Time. That meant we had been up for close to 15 hours straight, but we forged on. The American flight was in a smaller, but more comfortable plane. We forged on towards Sioux City. My son was listening to music on his headset and I was staring out at the dark plains beneath, lit up in patches of light that seemed to reflect the stars in the sky. My wife was reading a book. As the captain finally announced the approach to Sioux City, there was a sigh of relief. We had been up and travelling for 16 hours.

Nevertheless, as the puddle-jumper gently bumped the ground and bounced, we watched from the small windows Sioux City shining at us like the City of God. As the plane rolled to a halt at the gate, we deplaned like bats out of hell to the airport exit. But hold on. The luggage we were told had arrived at Sioux Falls. Eureka, God was good. We piled into my sister-in-law’s new Explorer and zoomed off to the Sioux Falls airport, which was about an hour’s drive away. When we finally arrived, my son and I jumped out of the red Explorer. We ran into the small airport and claimed our luggage and cheered. Out we went again into the Explorer, waiting faithfully, slammed the doors shut and raced towards Sioux Falls. We had made it. It was 12 A.M. Central Time. We’d been up for 18 hours straight. Eureka!

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice said, what will the return be like? For now, our family was waiting for us. My two nieces, my father-in-law and mother-in-law (whom we wouldn’t see till the next day) and we headed to our last stop.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.