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Published: June 26th 2017
Mrs H and I never turn our nose up at the chance of an adventure providing the adventure does not include bungee jumping, sky diving, scuba diving, pot holing or walking briskly uphill!! For this reason, most of our adventures usually involve a ship of some description. If we had known what was in store for us within the first twenty-four hours of setting off across the Atlantic we may have booked a different route altogether for this was an adventure that if given the choice, we would not have picked even though there was not a bungee rope or an aqualung in sight!!
As you've probably guessed, we've set off on another cruise that will see us sail from Fort Lauderdale across the Atlantic calling at Ponta del Garda in the Azores, Lisbon, Bilbao, Le Havre in Northern France before arriving at Southampton where a four-hour drive in a hire car should see us safely home.
This is the first time we have booked the flights for a cruise through the cruise company. This way we could avoid travelling via Heathrow providing we routed our journey via Atlanta. The stopover was only a couple of hours. Plenty of time to make it through immigration, collect our bags, proceed through customs, drop our bags off and leg it to the Domestic terminal for our onward journey. On second thoughts!! What if…?? Nah, not worth contemplating! (But it should have been)
…Our journey got off to a good start. Taxi picked us up at 06:30am to take us to Manchester Airport. Our flight left on time. I even enjoyed the in-flight movie. I chose the Accountant starring Ben Affleck. Who would have thought that trial balances and double entry could have been so riveting! The flight time to Atlanta was 8hrs 40mins. The first 8hrs 30mins passed without incident. Then came the first of the Captains announcements: Due to an electrical storm, the tower is not giving permission for any planes to land at Atlanta International. We are currently circling to await further instructions. I'll keep you posted. It was just over an hour, an extremely bumpy hour, before we finally landed. We now had about an hour before our connection departed but on the face of it, the likelihood is that the knock-on effect would delay our connection also. At this stage, we didn't appreciate how much of a knock on effect the storm would have!
The problem with planes when 'stacking up' (to use a technical term) is that a large number of aircraft are likely to land within a very short space of time. This theory was realised when we turned the corner that revealed the huge immigration hall to be confronted upwards of 5,000 tired and frustrated travellers all meandering their way toward passport control.
Our last trip Stateside saw us ‘waltz' through immigration in 20 minutes. This process had us ‘wait by a wall' for 20 minutes; join the main queue; be shown to an automated kiosk where, after scanning passport and answering a few questions, registering fingerprints of right hand and having a photo taken were told to join another queue before finally handing our ‘printout' to a real person and told to ‘
have a nice day' before entering the US. Whilst at the ‘waiting by the wall' stage we both received the inevitable text from Virgin Atlantic titled: TIME CHANGE AFFECTING YOUR FLIGHT: We're very sorry to let you know your flight times have been changed. Original flight time VS5089 17:00. New time 17:38. Well we'd clawed back some time but at this rate not sure if it will give us enough time. Another email shortly followed: Original flight time VS5089: 17:00. New flight time: 17:37? Question mark!? What did the question mark mean? We were soon to find out. New text. Original flight time VS5089: 17:00. New flight time: 21:44? That damn question mark was still there. I had just finished reading the last email when the final text arrived. I only had to read the title to be put in the picture: CANCELLATION AFFECTING YOUR FLIGHT! Well at least we're in no rush now. They're sure to put us on a later flight. What we didn't expect was to be offered a new flight….in two days time!!! The Delta agent looked at routing us via Miami but again nothing until 15:00 tomorrow. Due to the tornado and electrical storms many planes have been either diverted or grounded so the whole airport was in in chaos. The agent persuaded us to take standby on a flight that was scheduled to depart at 20:50. Our bags would be confirmed on this flight and if for any reason we failed to secure a seat, our luggage would be held in Ft Lauderdale until our safe arrival. However, the agent was confident that, due to the disruption, there are likely people who would not make the flight, we should be pretty safe. As our luggage was taken from us we didn't know that this would be the last time we'd see our cases for 36 hours!
Our standby tickets had A30 scrawled and circled in marker pen. We took the train to terminal ‘A' and, after stopping for a bite to eat, found gate 30. Literally thousands of people were waiting around, checking departure boards and queuing to speak to frantically overworked agents and seriously undermanned counters. After waiting another hour, the gate should have opened but still showed ‘
Raleigh. Departure 20:45' Five hundred travellers were waiting for an announcement. Roisin pushed her way toward an official but no idea as to in what capacity. He could have been the janitor for all we knew but he had a uniform. That made him someone in the know!!! It turns out our flight had been moved to B23. Chaos still reigned supreme inside the airport and chaos also rained (torrentially!!) outside the airport as well!!
After another short train ride to terminal B, gate 23 didn't seem so busy. A screen above showed passengers names. HODG/C AND HODGS/R appeared as numbers 19 and 20 respectively. The next screen showed Business Class standby and Comfort plus standby. There were only 2 passengers in comfort plus standby and it looked like there were six places available. An agent was at a nearby desk answering questions so after determining where the queue ended, we joined the line. Having travelled Premium Economy on Virgin Atlantic, we were also booked on the Delta equivalent, Comfort plus. Things were starting to look positive. The queue was slow moving. It turns out that most people in this queue did not even have a reservation!! Three more in front of us when the agent made an announcement:
‘I'll take two more then the rest will have to speak to my colleague', as she gestured to her right. We had noticed the said colleague has been on the phone dealing with one customer for almost 45 minutes. I moved queue whilst Roisin stayed put just in case the agent changed her mind. The queue I moved to was in disarray. There were three mini queues forming into one larger queue. People were in the queue who weren't even queuing to speak to anyone!! In the meantime, checking the standby board, we had moved down the pecking order to numbers 25 and 26. Roisin's agent, true to her word, packed up and with no replacement, my queue swelled to an even more disorderly line. I overheard on man on his phon
e: ‘It is like a zoo here'. I thought to myself,
‘Yes, plenty of monkeys but no organ grinder!!' Finally, after another age, it was our turn. Roisin explained that we have been put on standby for economy but we are travelling comfort plus. There is no class when it comes to standby. It is based on the cost of your ticket. In theory, someone who purchased an economy ticket and paid more than someone who purchased a comfort plus bucket ticket, would get a preference on the standby list. That is the reason why we had now been relegated to numbers 35 and 36. Things were not looking so promising after all. We decided to sit down and await our fate.
We started to weigh up our options. It's about 700 miles from Atlanta to Ft Lauderdale so a hire car was looking the best bet but searching for a hotel was proving fruitless. The time was now 21:45. Finally after waiting for the captain and crew to arrive the plane was ready to board. All those with confirmed seats disappeared down the tunnel toward the aircraft. Then the fun began. Names were called. The same names. Over and over again. ‘
For f**ck sake', Exclaimed Roisin.
‘If they're not here now they never will be!!' Above the commotion, I thought I heard the name Hodges paged. It sounded close enough to try. ‘
No' said Roisin
. ‘They're only up to number 13'. Several minutes later another muffled announcement.
‘…with the name Hog-e-son. Party of two?' Right I thought. Close enough. ‘
Here', I shouted waving our standby tickets above my head like someone who had just won the roll over jackpot at Gala Bingo!!
So, not sure how we advanced so quickly up the leader board but we couldn't believe we were actually on board being shown to our seat. After seven hours since our connecting flight should have taken off, we were fastening our seatbelts and no one in the world was going to wrestle me out of that seat whilst the seatbelt sign was still lit!! Not even the bawling baby in the row behind. She may have been kicking and screaming and having a tantrum but is was music to our ears!! And let's face it. That baby sounded like everyone on board must have felt!!!
As I settled in, I became aware of big puppy dog eyes staring back at me. I glance across and sure enough there was a big puppy dog sitting in the window seat. ‘Blimey', I thought. Even this poodle, terrier hybrid thingy took priority over a pair of seasoned travellers!! Lily, as the dog was named never once took her eyes of me for the duration of the 1hr 40-minute flight. This was more unnerving than the actual flight!!
The aircraft doors were closed, announcements made and we started to pull away from the stand. Whilst taxiing to the runway, the planed stopped. The pilot announced: ‘
All take offs have been temporarily suspended until the storm passes. This should be very shortly and we have been advised by the authorities to keep the engines running!!' This latest delay lasted less than ten minutes. We were in the air. The time was ten past midnight. The storm below still flashed sporadically to our portside. Turbulence was the worst I had experienced in three decades of flying. The plane was tossed from side to side and dipped without warning. Later Roisin posted on a social media site that she prayed for a safe landing. I don't think saying ‘Oh Jesus!! Over and over again actually counts as praying in the eyes of the catholic church!!!
At 01:30 we touched down at Ft. Lauderdale. The wait at the baggage carousel proved fruitless. After this ordeal, we made it safely to our destination but our luggage never did!! Yet another thirty-minute queue whilst we reported our missing luggage. The good news is that Delta airlines managed to trace our bags straight away. We were given emergency toiletries and a reference number where, once logged on to their web site could tack the progress of our bags. We were assured they would be on this first flight out of Atlanta this morning (06:57)
Just when we thought ‘It's over', we took a taxi!! Our hotel is probably less than two miles from the airport. We showed the taxi driver the hotel name. He studied it. Checked it under the light then turned the paper at a different angle. Could this taxi driver actually read English? How long does it take to read the name of the hotel and the address? Again, he held it under the light then finally passed the paper back to me. The meter tariff started at $2.50 so I anticipated the fare shouldn't have cost more than $10. I glanced at the meter as we turned into the hotel parking lot. The meter had been switched off! I motioned to Roisin. She then pointed out that the cost of the fare was on a screen in the headrest of the seat in front. The total cost of the journey came to $6.50. I gave him $10 and told him to keep the change. He then said: ‘
It's $20'. ‘$6.50'
, corrected Roisin. ‘Why $6.50. You pay me $20,' he said handing me back the $10 bill.
It says $6.50 on the screen,'
I said. ‘What screen? ‘This screen', I said opening the back door and pointing to the front passenger headrest. ‘
Oh! forget it,' The taxi driver said. And with that he drove off!!!
I turned to Roisin still with my $10 note clutched in my hand.
‘Well that was a cheap taxi ride. Do you think I should have asked for a receipt anyway!!' Little did we know the clock had already started ticking. Two and a half days until we boarded the Crown Princess. Two and a half days to track down our missing luggage before things became serious.
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Marie
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Can't wait to hear more. Great blog