Journey To The West (Western USA....)

Our Journey to visit our son, Kelvin in the US did not have the smooth start we had hoped for. Our flight, on Sat. Jan 17th - SQ 016 on a Boeing 777 ER to San Francisco via Seoul was delayed for half an hour due to a fuel gauge malfunction. We arrived in Seoul after a 5 hour flight, were told to get off the plane with our hand luggages and then directed to go straight to a counter to have our names checked, went straight through customs check (x-ray bags, take off shoes, etc) and reboarded immediately - this had us all thinking - what that was all about? - wouldn't it be easier for all to have us stay in the plane, or otherwise have us go into a 'secured holding room', so that there is no need to recheck bags. After all, all our bags were so thoroughly checked in Singapore. The result was a further delay in the plane taking off for the 10 hour flight to SFO.

We arrived in San Francisco 45 minutes late at 11.30 am - which got us worried as we had a connecting flight to catch at 1.00 pm. On reaching the Immigration counters, we were disheartened to see long queues left , right and centre and, worse yet, the lines were hardly moving. It turned out that there was a computer systems malfunction which caused all the PCs there to work in 'stop and start' mode. We waited and waited and finally got through at 12.30 pm, collected our checked -in bags, made a quick dash to the dosmestic terminal for our Delta Airline connecting flight, but sad to say - were too late, we had missed our connecting flight to Salt Lake City. We got checked onto the next flight leaving at 4.30 pm, which was on time and it got us to Salt Lake City by 7 pm local time. By the time we got our bags out, collected our Hertz rental car and found our way to the SLC Holiday Inn Airport Hotel, it was 9.30 pm. It had been 24 hours since we left home - but it was still Sat 17th Jan, I always feel strange about this gain in time when travelling eastwards to the US. We were so tired, we just went to bed!

Lesson learned - in future, allow plenty more time in between connecting flights, especially when travelling to the USA........