Why Does It Always Happen to Me?

Let this be a warning to you: don't ever travel with me via aircraft.

If you have ever heard me talk about my airplane experiences, you would know that I seem to be cursed be severe travel bad luck: luggage that takes its own vacations, pilots who don't show up to work, missing ID, etc. Every once in a while I get pretty lucky where the only thing that goes wrong is that my computer falls to the ground at the security checkpoint.

The first leg of my journey went so flawlessly that I was optimistic that the whole trip would continue that way. I made it to the airport well in-time for my flight, and my luggage was even underweight. (I think that was a first!) I did have to go through a security check three times, for some reason. The seven-and-a-half hour flight to London didn't even feel that long, and I only snoozed for about a half hour. I did, however, learn that The Thomas Crown Affair was not an even remotely interesting movie, despite starring Steve McQueen.

After a three hour layover at Heathrow Airport a huge crowd gathered at gate B32 to board the 747 bound for Seattle. I took my seat next to a nice older couple that were very friendly and pleased that I was not traveling with a baby. The passengers sat and mingled, I took a brief nap and read a magazine, yet we were still on the ground. The pilot finally announced that there was a leak while trying to fuel the jumbo jet. For about two and a half hours they fixed the problem and then ran diagnostics in order to see if the leak had indeed been fixed.

When they were finally satisfied, we slowly rolled down the tarmac. While moving my fellow passengers and I heard a lot of commotion coming from the very back of the plane. We stalled at the runway until we were greeted with another announcement stating that the passengers in the back of the plane noticed that not only we were still leaking fuel, there also appeared to be some smoke spewing out of one of the engines. He continued to let us know that we would have to de-board and wait for a new plane to take us to Seattle. What he courteously did not tell us that it was either that or crash somewhere over Manchester.

The initial estimation for our delay was about six hours. We were handed food vouchers (that worked out quite nicely at Pret a Manger), and then we waited. I wandered around the large terminal 5, pondered buying a considerable amount of Cadbury, and wondered how my family would find out about the delay. I had zero access to phone numbers and email, so I hoped they wouldn't have to wait too long at SeaTac before figuring it out. Every once in a while I would meet up with my fellow passengers and we would chat. One nice lady assured me that if I fell asleep she would be sure to awake me once our gate was announced.

Around 9pm (6 hours after we were supposed to take off), were called to a brand new gate and we all hurriedly gathered to wait some more. While we did have a more spry 747 to take us over the pole, we didn't have a crew or (and now this is the kicker) a turnover agent. You know--the person who calls the rows to board the aircraft. Apparently not just anyone can do this job--even though I was more than willing to take a crack at it. It was rather frustrating waiting for that person while hearing flights around you get called into order, especially when they couldn't just hop over to our gate when they finished up. You know, six hours is plenty of time to find someone, one would think, but we still had to wait another 4 hours for ours.

So if you are doing any sort of tallying, that would be a whopping 10 hour delay. Pretty much we left Heathrow when we should have been arriving in Seattle. It was like taking two long flights...or rather three considering the first long flight from that morning.

I was tired when we finally touched down in Seattle--I had been awake for 31 hours with maybe a total of 4 hours of napping--but, oh, so happy to finally be in Seattle.

And, you know, not cindered somewhere over the English countryside.