Flying With United- a Comedy or a Tragedy?

Hi Everyone,

Our trip was chocked full of so many oopsies that I wanted to share them with you so that maybe you will be amused. Our journey began in Nashville. We checked our bags and got our boarding passes. Matthew noticed after looking through them that the lady hadn't issued a boarding pass for Toby. He was to travel as a lap infant.

I went to the counter and got that straightened out. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3:22 pm and go to Denver, then Los Angeles. At the gate our names were paged and we were asked if we would give up our seats on the flight. We were offered a non-stop flight to Los Angeles in exchange and would be riding with American Airlines for that flight. The non-stop did not leave Nashville until 6 pm. We agreed to swap as it was one less plane ride for the children. For those who may not know our daughter is 2 and a half and our son is 6 months old.

Once we arrive in Los Angeles we are making way through security. We then hear our named being paged to our next gate. We were being paged repeatedly and we have no idea why. We had two hours before our flight was scheduled to leave. Once we get to the gate we go to the counter and are first told that we may have to pay taxes on the baby. I was slightly annoyed as this made no sense at all. It turned out that are names had been taken off the flight from L.A. to Melbourne and are seats were already given away. Arrrgghh! It made no sense why that happened. So, the lady finally got that fixed and assigned us new seats. But wait!! There's more.

That was our longest flight in duration...just over 13 hours. We had center seats. The people in front of us kept their seats reclined nearly in our laps the whole flight. Then, toward the end the girl in front of Matthew turned around and asked him to stop rocking her seat. He was bouncing his legs to try and settle Toby. Toby is a little bulldozer, so he kept pushing on the seat with his legs or hands. Although we would adjust him to not be able to reach he still would twist and turn.So the girl got annoyed and she threw herself back in her seat which then caused the seat to bump Toby in the head. Of course, Toby did not notice but Matt was ready to knock her block off. Thankfully that all occurred within the last two hours of the flight.

We arrive in Sydney to connect and go on to Melbourne. When they gave our boarding passes to us in L.A. they only gave one to Matthew and told him that would get us all through. Lol, wrong! It turns out that someone had decided that Matt would travel alone from Sydney as they had removed me and the children from the last flight. So that had to be fixed and we were added back to the flight, but of course they had to find us seats.

Thankfully all the planes held together and no one was left standing at the border. That was our first, and shall be our last, journey with United. The old saying goes, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."