Long Way Around to Madeira

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January 9th 2008

Published: January 9th 2008

Monday morning as we prepared for our mid-day flight to Madeira from Lisbon, we thought we had an easy day ahead of us--Not! It turned into the most bizarre travel day either of us has ever experienced.

First problem: as we were deposited by taxi in front of Terminal One at 11:15 a.m. for our 1 p.m. flight, we realized that Someone had misread the itinerary and our flight actually left at 11:30 a.m. from Terminal Two! Our first inclination was to make a mad dash to Terminal Two, but we were shortly disabused of that notion as the path we followed took us to a bus that just sat there for ten minutes waiting for more passengers.

O.K. We re-booked for the 2 p.m. flight and had lunch in the terminal while waiting for the next flight. Everything went according to plan with that flight until we were about twenty minutes out from Madeira. At that point, the pilot came on the loudspeaker to announce that Madeira was weathered in so she was going to be circling for a bit waiting for the weather to clear.

Fifteen minutes later she announced we would be flying into Porto Santo, the only other island in the archipelago that had an airstrip. We sat on the ground there for 2-1/2 hours waiting for the weather to clear on Madeira. The passengers (mostly Portuguese) seemed o.k. with the delay and everyone stayed in good spirits. We saw the weather around us start to deteriorate, so the captain announced we were going to leave and try once again for Madeira.

Five minutes later she announced we were heading to Porto! The Portuguese lady behind us stopped a flight attendant and launched into a heated discussion with him about something.

When we landed in Porto, we were all escorted from the plane, into the terminal, up and down hallways and to Gate 31. By this time most of the Portuguese were upset about something. There was just one person behind the desk who was taking the brunt of this. The whole thing escalated to the point where people were yelling and pounding the desk. None of the few English speakers amongst us had any idea what was going on.

The number of airline personnel soon increased, the Policia arrived and things calmed down. We never did find out what the dust-up was about, but were frustrated ourselves that no announcement had been made telling us what was going on or what to expect.

Without warning, airline staff started handing out new tickets and everyone moved toward a plane that had just parked at Gate 31. As soon as we were airborne, a different pilot came on the loudspeaker and said that we were headed for Lisbon! No food or beverages were served and it must have been about 8 p.m. at this point.

The Lisbon Airport has this weird system wherein most of the planes park around the perimeter of the field after they land and people are off-loaded onto buses and taken to a terminal. So, we got off the plane, got onto a bus and were taken back to Terminal Two. Oh good, we thought, we´ll get a chance to grab something to eat before we get on yet another flight. Not!!

We were whisked in one door of the terminal, out another door, onto another bus, and taken back to the plane parked right next to the one we just got off of. The announcement was made that this flight was going to Madeira. Good! The next announcement was that we had to wait a few minutes for some people. We waited for 50 minutes for the Madeira soccer team!

Omigod, we were weary. We finally took off, finally got food, and finally landed in Madeira at 12:45 a.m. This was to be a 1-1/2 hour flight that actually took 13-1/2 hours from the time we got to the airport in Lisbon until we got to the airport in Madeira.

We´ve now had two days here on the beautiful Island of Madeira, but have spent most of our time in recovery mode. Will write more about this lovely place later, but just had to share this incredibly story of our "short" flight to Madeira.

Long Way Around to Madeira

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