An Exceedingly Frustrating, Very Long Journey Home

Alluring Alentejo: Days 9 & 10

Monday, 14 October 2024

Today started off great. We slept well, enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at the hotel, and then had a reasonable departure at 8:30 am to heat to Lisbon International for a 12:20 pm departure for home.

Our tour director, Paula de Mariscal, was so wonderful and it was hard to say goodbye!

And here we are with new friends John and Jan Moran and Rosemary and Don Keibel:

At the airport…

We have never been in an airport that makes you walk through so many stores to get to passport control. It was amazing, and yes, we ended up spending money. Kudos to the LIS marketing folks!

After shopping, we went through passport control, then security, and then we grabbed a sandwich and coffee at a cafe near our gate. Boarding was relatively smooth and we pushed away from the gate on United Airlines flight 943 bound for Washington Dulles. Except that the brakes failed.

Before I go on, my apologies to my good Navy friend who is a currently serving captain with United Airlines. He and I served in two squadrons together flying the EA-6B Prowler electronic attack aircraft. I hate to beat on his employer, but the experience we’ve had with United Airlines this year has been abysmal. Often delayed, it seems most the problems are maintenance-related and always involve their Boeing aircraft.

Regarding Boeing, if I wind up dead in a couple of weeks, I did not kill myself. Just saying. Reflecting on this year when Frieda and I have flown on nearly 30 separate flights, each and every aircraft that has had a problem was a Boeing. Never an Airbus. Is it a Boeing issue or is it the airline maintenance folks? I dunno but this year has been a doozy with Boeing aircraft maintenance issues. My personal opinion is that this great aerospace company, which has been struggling (see the Starliner fiasco) with every aspect of their business, has been focused on the wrong things. Perhaps this is a good first step.

Getting back to the story, after about three hours of troubleshooting 15 feet from the gate with the engines running, the pilot announced the flight was cancelled and we would have to find another flight home.

Disembarking a Boeing 767 with over 300 people on board is a big damn deal it and takes awhile. Inside the terminal it’s chaos. With three hours to be ready for this contingency, the gate desk agents are overwhelmed and have no idea what to do. After 45 minutes or so, we decide to head to baggage and try calling United on their 1-800 number.

Since we had “departed” Europe, we are now new arrivals into Portugal. This means going all the way through immigration then baggage claim. All the while I’m on hold trying to get an agent.

Finally, bags in hand, and well into the late afternoon, we get a new itinerary. We are now going to have to take a 7:20 flight to Munich, Germany with an arrival around 11:30 pm.

The ever-cheerful Frieda is still smiling. I’m mad as hell.

The only thing making me happy is this TAP (The Airline of Portugal) flight is on an Airbus A321neo. That means the aircraft at least will be in good working order.

We’ve not been back to Germany since leaving there in March 2000 after my three-year tour at the United States European Command in Stuttgart. So it was kinda cool to add Germany to our European travels this year. But there was hardly time for sightseeing or even getting a good German beer.

We booked a room at the Hotel Moxy about two kilometers from the airport and after a short taxi ride and check-in, we were in bed a little after midnight.

We arose around 6:00 am after about little over five hours of fitful sleep, showered, put on the last of our clean clothes, had a nice breakfast, and then headed back to the airport for Day 2 of this crazy journey.

This was the view from our hotel room in the morning before we departed. And yes, like our week in Portugal, it was raining.

Will this Boeing 767 get us to Chicago on time?

Loaded up in our Boeing 767 for our 11:30 am departure to Chicago, there is a maintenance issue with an overhead bin not closing. Delayed sightly, this time it was at least fixable and no flight cancellation. Whew!

Eleven plus long hours later, we land in Chicago. It was a much longer flight than the original Lisbon to Washington flight would have been because Munich took us further east and now we had to fly further west.

Now, we found ourselves with yet another long layover — this time nearly seven hours. After two hours of customs, bag claim and bag recheck, and moving from the international terminal to the domestic one, we still had about five hours to kill before our 7:59 pm departure for Knoxville.

We found an Italian restaurant near our gate, ordered a bottle of wine, and proceeded to kill about three hours wining and dining. We rarely drink alcohol in airports and we’ve certainly never opted for an entire bottle. But with so much time to kill, and frustration at the max, it was a good decision.

Boarding the flight for Knoxville is uneventful until we get all settled in.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. It seems that this flight is for Knoxville but we were told it was going to Memphis. We therefore have to file a new flight plan.”

After sinfully uttering an explicative or two, I think I cried a little bit. A whimper for sure. Truly, you can’t make this stuff up. And yes, this delay ended up being nearly an hour on the ground, stuck in the plane.

It would be hard to describe how wonderful this night view of Knoxville looked to me at 10:58 pm as we were on final approach. It would be equally difficult to describe how adamantly Frieda and I feel about NEVER, EVER, flying United Airlines again if we can avoid it. I’ve not documented all our other flights here, but trust me, there are more stories I could tell about this year and our struggles with United Airlines (and Boeing aircraft).

Baggage claim took the usual forever at McGhee Tyson and then we had an hour drive home. When we walked through the door, it was nearly 1:00 am Wednesday morning the 16th of October. Had the original flight from Lisbon gone smoothly on Monday, we would have been home before 9:00 pm that same day! And I would have been able to go to work on Tuesday as had been my plan.

The bottom line: Horrible United Airlines flight experiences coming and going that bookended what could only be described as an amazing and flawless AHI tour called “Alluring Alentejo.” Book the trip! Just don’t fly United (or Boeing).