• About
  • Guest Posts!

A Life in Plastic Baggies

~ Travel adventure & absurdity

A Life in Plastic Baggies

Category Archives: Cancellation Clusters

You Can’t Go Home Again

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by alifeinplasticbaggies in Adventures Abroad, Cancellation Clusters, With love from the Tarmac

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

all out disasters, Delta

It’s hard to believe I started the blog a year ago today. Not to get all 15 year-old emo on you, but it’s been a really amazing and gratifying experience. I’ve been able to bond with new and old friends over shared flying catastrophes as well as get some serious anxiety off my chest. So thanks, all. Cheapest therapy yet.

In honor of the one-year mark, I am finally going to recount a story I’ve been hinting at for a while now–the trip home from studying abroad in 2004…brace yourself.

Trip type: Personal

Airline: Delta/KLM

Route: CDG>AMS>JFK>LGA>MSP

Child, child, have patience and belief, for life is many days, and each present hour will pass away.

-Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

On a couple of occasions whilst trapped in some travel nightmare or another, I’ve had the distinct fear that I’m never going to get home again. I know it’s irrational and completely brought on by the current stress, but I can’t help it. There’s this point where you’re sitting on a plane/in an airport/at security and you just feel completely defeated–like all the travel gods are conspiring to keep you from your destination.

Sacre Coeur

Sacre Coeur, Paris

I have never felt this more acutely than on my way home from studying abroad in 2004. It was late June in Paris, hot and sticky, and I hadn’t been home since March. Although my time in France had been nothing short of magical, I was ready to go home.

My father had come to Paris to collect me (my parents joked that if they didn’t physically retrieve me I wouldn’t ever come home) and it had been the perfect close to my travels as I got to spend a week showing off the city I had come to love. But now we were homeward bound.

Things got off to a bad start right at Charles de Gaulle. As mentioned in my post on this airport, it is perpetually under construction and, despite Paris being a huge tourist attraction, nobody really wants to help you. So my dad and I wandered around until we found the temporary relocation of the KLM desk. Although we wouldn’t know until we were stateside that our bags had been mis-routed, the KLM agent was new to the job and not instilling a whole lot of confidence, especially when we knew this was only the first of our three legs. She consistently re-asked us our names and our final destination, even when our passports and boarding passes were in her hands…we should have known she was a harbinger of disaster.

Monet's house at Giverny

Monet’s house at Giverny

Arriving late in Amsterdam (naturally), we had about ten minutes to make our connection. Which meant I had to run the entire length of the airport with my poor dad hauling our carry-ons behind me as I tried to stop the flight from departing without us (more color on this in my last post). Luckily, the door hadn’t yet closed and we made it on the flight. Things seemed to be looking up–everything would be better once we were in the US, right? If only we had known what was ahead…

Cannes, France

Cannes, France

We landed at JFK on time and had a couple of hours before our flight to Minnesota. We were herded to the international luggage carousels to collect our luggage before connecting to our domestic flight. We waited. And waited. And waited. No luggage. Finally realizing our bags were not coming, my dad and I went through Customs and straight to the Delta luggage services office. If you ever think you have a terrible job, you don’t. Livid as I was, I cooled down considerably after watching the poor woman running the office listen to some self-absorbed businessman go on for five minutes straight about how unacceptable it was that his luggage was lost and demanding $2,000 for a replacement suit. Oy. As if she was just going to give him a wad of cash and her sincere apology.

When we got our turn with Deb (I will always remember her name because I took special note to look at it after the jerk left in a huff), I was calmer but still completely riled up. Our two checked bags were missing and they held the wine and precious souvenirs I had collected over my stay. Luckily, Deb assured us that luggage is rarely “lost”, it’s usually just mis-routed. Indeed, our bags had been sent straight through to Minneapolis rather than following us.

Gordes, France

Gordes, France (Provence). No wonder I almost didn’t come home.

With that crisis averted, we were sure it’d be smooth sailing. Oh how wrong we were.

There had been some issue with our tickets so we went up to Delta ticketing at JFK. The extremely unhelpful representative told us that our flight had been canceled due to weather and that he could potentially re-book us on a flight to MN from Laguardia, but we’d have to get over there right away as the flight was in 45 minutes. Then he ripped up our boarding passes. Ripped. Them. Up. Yes, our flight had been canceled, but shouldn’t we have some proof of our previous arrangements? Anxiety reaching Defcon 3.

But what was there to do? We hailed a taxi and got over to Laguardia. After re-checking in, we headed to our gate. By now we knew that there was some serious weather affecting all East Coast airports. In fact, every airport had been completely shut down for a few hours (including JFK, LGA, Newark, Reagan, Dulles and ATL) and flights were getting canceled left and right. Awesome news.

Swiss Alps, Geneva

Swiss Alps, Geneva

Our gate agent assured us our flight was going but we weren’t so confident when the flight next to us (to Detroit) boarded and then un-boarded with the flight ending up canceled. We did board though, and I let out a huge sigh of relief when we actually pushed back. Finally, I was going to get home!

Not so fast. During our boarding and beginning taxi, the airports were shut down again. As our pilot explained, however, if we went back to the terminal, we’d be in for the night so he wanted to wait it out on the Tarmac as that was our only shot of actually getting home. Thank goodness for a MN-based flight crew and some foresight on the part of the pilot to top off the fuel.

Three hours later we were still sitting on the Tarmac with no end in sight. My cell phone was dead as were our laptops and the mini-DVD player my dad had with him. We had pretty much nothing to do except try to remain calm. Not my forte.

FINALLY, after nearly four hours on the Tarmac, we got an update from the pilot. Apparently, airports had reopened and due to his air traffic control connections (is there a pilot frat?), we were going to get out. Better than that, because so many planes had to go back to the terminal after running low on fuel, we were going to be the second plane out of the entire East Coast. I’m pretty sure I cried when we took off. There was a whole lot of clapping.

Although I had convinced myself I was never going to get home, we did finally make it (and for all those shenanigans, we were only about seven hours late). My big bag did not (of course–god forbid something work out), but it was delivered to my parents’ house the next day and all the wine survived. Whew.

And this, my friends, is why I never make a connection. Direct flights only.

Eiffel Tower

La Tour Eiffel, bien sur

P.S. – you will all be delighted to know that after missing both our prior anniversaries due to work travel, I will be firmly planted on the ground here in MN come Thursday’s three-year mark. To the rest of our natural lives (and beyond), Intrepid E!

Boston and the Bar

03 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by alifeinplasticbaggies in Cancellation Clusters

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

all out disasters, Delta, Intrepid E

Another from the archives…July 2010.

Trip type: Personal

Airline: Delta

Route: BOS-MSP

For any readers who have taken the Bar exam (or any put-upon spouses who have lived through the fun), you’ll recall (undoubtedly with a shudder) how riddled with anxiety you were in the days leading up to it.

Now imagine that the last weekend before the bar you’re attending one of your best friend’s weddings. Then imagine this:

It’s Sunday, the morning after the wedding, and we’re due to leave Boston on a direct flight home at 6pm (E’s family is on the east coast so we wanted to stay a little longer to spend some time with them). At 11:30, I receive an automated call from Delta saying our flight is canceled and that we’ve been rebooked for tomorrow (aka Monday, aka the day before the Bar) going through Atlanta.

Immediate response: No.

Naturally, I immediately fall apart. I still, however, insist I will be the one to call Delta demanding a better resolution. I call Delta in tears telling them that we must reach Minneapolis tonight. Luckily, they are able to book us on two of the last three seats available. We have to leave almost immediately and connect through Reagan but we should make it home that day.

Off to the airport we go and E suggests we go to the Delta lounge in Boston’s A Terminal for some pre-flight drinks. The A Terminal is broken into two parts with an underground tunnel connecting either side. Our flight was on one side and the lounge was on the other. Nothing can ever be easy.

After a glass (or two…hard to remember) of wine, I’m feeling much better about life in general. We head back to the other side of the terminal to catch our connection to D.C. and find that the tunnel has been shutdown. Completely. As in, we’re on the moving sidewalk and nearly fall into a group of people as we come off of it because everyone has been halted so abruptly.

The crowd is tensely whispering to each other and it’s clear nobody has any idea what’s going on. There are some TSA folks lingering around acting as the barricade keeping us from the other side but they’re tight lipped. About 20 minutes in, I’m ready to have a conniption when they suddenly release the throng. No explanation given but hey, we’re on our way to the gate so I’m willing to let it go.

Finally aboard the Barbie jet, I’m praying we can just get to D.C. and connect home. The plane is so tiny we actually had to climb up the stairs and, as E and I are in the front row, we’re nearly knee-to-knee with the sole flight attendant when she tucks into her jump seat. We’re just about ready to push when she gets a call from the pilots telling her there’s weather trouble in the mid-Atlantic and D.C. is not accepting flights for the foreseeable future. Neat. After another tense 20 minute wait, D.C. apparently reopens and we’re able to leave (it’s funny how long 20 minutes can feel when you have no idea if you’re ever going to move).

We land in D.C. and as we come off the jetway and into the airport I see the telltale signs of a day of terrible mid-Atlantic weather: it looks like a refugee zone. (I ended up chatting with a woman who’d been at Reagan since 8am (it’s about 5pm at this point) trying to get to Atlanta. And she was with a small child. Note to self: It can always be worse.))

Now comes the fun of flying through Reagan where flights are bounced from gate to gate constantly. There were two flights to Minneapolis that afternoon, one at 4pm and one at 7pm. We’re on the 7pm but the 4pm hasn’t even left yet so I’m not feeling very optimistic about an on-time departure. Watching the flight board was useless as our flight went from one gate to another to disappearing altogether at one point. Finally, E suggested we split up and stand in line at each of the two counters we’d variously seen listed as hosting our flight (we needed seat assignments since we’d been added so late to the flight).

As I’m standing in my line across the concourse, I strike up a conversation (obviously) with some guy who tells me he’s a consultant who flies this route every Sunday and has yet to see a flight leave a.) on time, or b.) from it’s originally scheduled gate. Comforting.

Finally, there’s an announcement that the 4pm flight will leave from Gate 12 (where E is in line) at 8pm and the 7pm will leave immediately after). By the grace of g-d, E stays in line despite this announcement and when the gate agent comes back to say that there are 10 extra seats on the flight and the first 10 people in line will get them, the first thing to go right all day does and we get on the plane.

Despite my seatmate telling me the flight is Detroit-bound as some kind of sadistic joke, everything goes smoothly as we head to MSP. Funnily enough, for all the craziness we endured, we end up making it home only an hour later than we would have on our original flight.

(And E passed the bar.)

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 788 other subscribers

Recent Posts

  • Luck be a lady flying through LAX
  • Becoming ‘That Family’: Adventures in Parenting and Flying
  • Is there a doctor on the flight?
  • Catch-up Vignettes II
  • Misty

Categories

  • Adventures Abroad
  • Baby on board
  • Boarding Blunders
  • Cancellation Clusters
  • Fun with Security
  • Holiday Hell
  • It's not always so bad
  • It's Terminal
  • Mingling with the Masses
  • Monday Madness
  • Not Even On a Plane
  • Quick thoughts from early flights
  • Seatmate Shenanigans
  • Sunday Fliers
  • Un-fun Up in the Air
  • With love from the Tarmac

AirTran all out disasters Babies Bella booze by request Delta hall monitoring holiday travel Intrepid E kids LAX Medical Emergency Mistaken identity Oy religion Schipol Soapbox tips TSA is my fave vacay! what rock did you come from under?

Archives

  • May 2015
  • February 2015
  • November 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • February 2014
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • October 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • A Life in Plastic Baggies
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • A Life in Plastic Baggies
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...