I'm hating United Airlines right now...

Right now I am really ticked off at not being able to fly Delta to Aberdeen, instead of United. after 900,000+ miles with Delta, this is my first real trip with United, and I find myself right now stuck at the Heathrow for 5 more hours. Really got hosed from the get-go by United. This is after a four hour delay in CHicago that caused us to lose our Heathrow connection to Aberdeen.

At my connection in Chicago, just 50 minutes before boarding, our flight disappeared from the board. After 45 minutes in line to get some clarification, I get told that our flight was delayed due to weather issues, and that our flight was still circling and waiting to land, and wouldn't land for 3 more hours. Right. No transatlantic flight has enough fuel to circle an airport for three hours after an 8 hour flight. The fact that it was a cloudless sky did not help her case either. Obviously we were lied to because any major delay due to mechanical error would make the airline have to cough up food vouchers and other renumerations. Weather, however, gets them in the clear.

We actually got the full story inadvertently a couple hours later from a different crew, who told us that our fight was on-time, but United made the decision to give our plane to the Munich route because the Munich plane was having mechanical problems with their hydraulics. Guess who got the crap Munich plane 5 hours later? I don't so much mind that United made the decision to divert our plane to another route (probably had fewer missed connections for the Munich flight), I'm just ticked they looked in my face and told me it was "the weather".

Then after landing at Heathrow, the gate agent told us to head straight to Terminal 1 to the United desk, where our updated tickets to Aberdeen were waiting for us. We get there, and find out we should have been sent to Terminal 5, a good 45 minutes away. Another missed flight. Another 5 hour layover.

Instead of getting into Aberdeen at 10 AM with a full day to check things out, I'm lucky to get in by 8 tonight.

Joys of flying...