Couple takes nearly $600 rideshare from St. Louis to Omaha after flight issues

OMAHA, Neb. -- Three extra hours in Hawaii with a view around Christmas doesn't sound like the worst thing. But for John Kinney and his wife, it was the start of a long trek home.

"We saw that we were going to be delayed. And that would mean that we wouldn't make our connection in Las Vegas," Kinney said.

And once they got to Vegas late, their plane was gone and there were too many winter storms to drive a rental car, KETV reported.

That's when they changed two flights and were finally on a plane to St. Louis.

"We started to look at rental cars in St. Louis and there's nothing to rent," Kinney said.

So, they looked at U-Haul trucks to drive back home.

"I think there was some 24 and 36 foot trucks that we could have rented. But that felt like really expensive and ridiculous," he said.

Kinney said they we're out of options, so they called a rideshare driver to the St. Louis airport as they tried to figure out what to do next.

"My wife casually joked with the Uber driver how it would be kind of funny if you could drive us to Omaha in the morning, and there was a pause and then the Uber driver said, 'Yeah, I'll do that," Kinney recalled.

So they hit the road on Wednesday.

"It would be 1.5 cents a mile, which when we started doing the calculations right away, ended up being a pretty reasonable figure," Kinney said.

Kinney said it ended up costing them nearly $600, but they got home and left with some pretty good conversation, too.

"If the Uber driver hadn't agreed to drive us, I don't know that -- I think we'd probably still be in St. Louis," Kinney said.