Floods,False Starts, Jump Seats and Fate?

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Ok so my journey didn't start out quite the way I'd planned.......

My first issue was a slight panic about the 94mm sudden downpour that Toronto was in the middle of receiving. Road closures, bad floods and mass power outages all occurring in the 24hrs before I was due to arrive. Awesome.....

Whenever I'm travelling, I always break each trip down into small manageable sections, so the first part of this one was to fly from Manchester to Heathrow and I knew at least that part wasn't going to be affected by floods in Toronto, so I left home Tuesday morning and had an uneventful flight down to Heathrow. So far so good....

My flight to Toronto was on a standby ticket as I booked it through my friend Emma's staff travel account which saved me a ton of money but unfortunately doesn't guarantee a seat on the flight as it relies on there being space available after all the full price paying customers have checked in. First flight I tried for was 12:15 and I didn't get on. Next flight was at 4pm so I spent a strange couple of hours in the secret staff travel room staring at the screens and hoping to see my booking change to confirmed (imagine being in Argos and never seeing your order number move to the collection point) It didn't change........

So it was on to plan B which was to drop my bags with Emma's mum and jump the tube from heathrow to Hyde Park to meet up with Emma, Lou and Kirsty who were all having a day out in London. I spent the evening with them, having a few beers and watching Pirates of the Carribean on a massive screen in Hyde Park and then back to Emma's for the night. It wasn't how I'd planned to spend my first night away, but there were plenty worse ways I could have spent it and I will forever be grateful for having friends in the South that are willing to rescue me from airports (this is the second time it's happened, both times while trying to fly to Toronto)

Onto Wednesday morning and plan C which was to go for that days 12:15 flight which was very full and there were a lot of people on the standby list ahead of me. Time for plan D then! The 4pm flight was again looking very full but Emma put in a jump seat request for me and thankfully it was accepted.

For anyone that doesn't know, a jump seat is one of the little fold down seats that the crew sit in during take off and landing and there are usually a few spare depending on how many crew are onboard. When you're in your jump seat, all you get is a seat. No entertainment system to pass the hours, the seat doesn't recline and you don't have an allocated meal because you're not a regular passenger

It's at this point that the gods of fate and travel karma that I thought had deserted me, stepped back in. I checked in for the flight about 25 mins before the gate was due to close and managed to do a quick dash through security and make it to the gate before they were even close to finishing boarding.

Once on the plane I had to wait until boarding was complete before I could take a seat, so the lovely crew offered me champagne while I waited (I don't drink when I fly so I had orange juice instead :-p ) I was then sent up to the top deck on the plane for a jump seat in the 1st class cabin. The lovely crew in charge of that cabin got me settled in to a seat just off to the side at the top of the stairs. They were supposed to make me sit at the back near the toilets but sneaked me into the other seat instead.

Then for the whole flight they made sure i was ok and had everything I needed and they even found me a spare meal........from the 1st class menu! Nicest food I have ever and will ever eat on a plane. I also got chocolate cake and ice cream for desert. So although I didn't have a tv to watch and couldn't recline my seat for a sleep, it really wasn't a bad flight. I had loads of space around me because I wasn't crammed into a row and I had fun chatting with the crew, playing on my DS and reading my kindle. I didn't feel half as washed out as I normally do after a 7hr flight.

Through talking to the crew, I learned that the previous days 12:15 flight had been cancelled due to technical faults and the 12:15 from that day had also been cancelled and they'd been unable to re-book everyone so had ended up leaving 26 regular passengers stranded at Heathrow. The extra day it took me to arrive also ensured that services in Toronto were back to normal, flood water had all gone and power was back up.

I'm a believer that everything happens for a reason so maybe all my troubles were just lining me up to be on the 4th flight to get a little special treatment and make sure the place I'm staying wasn't under water and that although it used my contingency day, I did get to Toronto in time for Thursday nights Barenaked Ladies concert which is pretty much the only reason I wasn't flying direct to Vancouver :-)



And for anyone wondering, there was a plan E which involved taking a flight at 6pm on Wednesday to Montreal, staying there overnight and then jumping the early train to Toronto on Thursday morning.

Lessons to remember are always have a contingency day and always have a plan E

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