No breakfast this morning! Booooooo. Well, we were being picked up at 8am for our shuttle to the airport (quite painless compared with some of our trips!) along with four of our fellow bus travellers. We did the last minute packing and headed down to the lobby, where Patrick was waiting to see us off.

The shuttle driver was on time and, after he made a short pit-stop at the Amtrak station, we got underway. We were soon at the airport, though he seemed to want us to be flying American Airlines. We persuaded him otherwise and he dropped us at the United check-in area and left.

We had no bother using the machine to submit all three bags under Di's name - she and Paul get three seventy pounds bag allowances as well as priority treatment (didn't help going to Dallas!) but it means they might get delivered to the baggage carousel quicker. All were under fifty pounds anyway - we clearly hadn't shopped enough!

We sent Dave through Premier security and we headed to the shorter, easier TSA Pre-Check line, which is fabulous - they can leave belts on, liquids in the bag, laptops in the bag and keep their shoes on! Soooo much quicker, though Dave wasn't that far behind. There weren't many in line at about 8.30am!

There was no United or Star Alliance Club at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, so we had to wait at the gate with the normal people. Tsk tsk. Still, the airport had Wi-Fi that worked! as well as power sockets. So not all bad.

Our first flight was pretty much on time. Our seats had extra legroom - there was no way were we going to get an upgrade with just six seats available. They'd all been booked and there were nine folks ahead of us in the upgrade line. Being first to check in counts for nothing, sadly!

The flight was uneventful and we arrived at Newark with several hours to spare.

We bought some duty free - boy those prices have gone up! It's hardly any cheaper at all now! Then, we headed to the United Club - the lift wasn't working so we climbed the stairs and were in. Sheesh it was busy in there too. Two circuits of the lounge and we finally found three seats together, with a power socket.

Worse, they've (since we were here two weeks ago) implemented a password login to use the WiFi. My phones took ages to connect and show the login screen and Paul couldn't get online at all until he picked up a password at reception. What with all this and an email to say that in future our miles would be dollar-related not distance-related makes the Mileage Plus scheme less and less positive for us! Grrr!!

We went down to our gate at 6pm for boarding at 6.15pm for a 7.15pm departure, to find our plane wasn't at our gate. This continued for a while, changing to 7.15pm, 7.29pm and 8.15pm, yet there was still no sign of a plane. Supposedly the airport was gridlocked, making this an Air Traffic Control problem, therefore out of the hands (and therefore the responsibility) of the Airline.

Our plane finally pulled up at the gate at around 8.30pm and by 9pm we were boarding. We were due to land around 9.30am so I hope the Archers transport checked the flight information, for our included taxi home - they said they would. Paws crossed!

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