Exactly one week ago today I was sitting on a plane on the runway of the Philidelphia airport simultaneously sleeping and praying that my flight wouldn't get cancelled.
Here's a rundown of the events which took place on June 29, 2006:
7 am: Woke up in apartment in Italy, finished moving things to new apartment, and got ready.
8:30 am: Dropped off apartment keys to the school and received depsoit
9 am: Headed to Marco Polo airport
10:15 am: Checked in for flight. Was asked to consider giving up my seat until the next day due to flight over-booking in exchange for a free flight or a 400 Euro voucher. I said no.
11:40 am: Departed Venice for Philadelphia.
Sometime during flight: Was amused by antics of drunk mother of three who was so intoxicated that she couldn't even help her 6 year old daughter go to the bathroom when she got sick because the mother drugged all of her children before lunch with adult sleeping pills.
Eastern Standard Time starts here...
3:30 pm: Landed in Philly, cleared customs, re-checked by bag and discovered that my 5:40 pm flight to Toronto had been CANCELLED!
3:31 pm: Had minor heart attack.
3:32 pm: Spoke to airline and was re-booked on the 7:55pm flight to Toronto.
3:35 pm - 7 pm: Amused myself in the airport as best as humanly possible given that I was running on about 5 hours of sleep and my body thought it was around 1am due to the time difference.
7:01 pm: Announcement that the flight would be about 30 minutes late. Ran into
New Homeowner's husband who was in the area for a work thing.
8 pm: Began boarding. I got bumped up to first class due to the previous flight cancellation.
8:30 pm: Finally pulled away from the gate.
8:31 pm - 10:30 pm: Sat on the runway waiting for the bad weather to clear from our flight path.
10:31 pm: Pilot announced that they crew had "timed out" and were unable to continue working so we headed back to the terminal and deboarded the plane.
11:30 pm: They announced that the flight was CANCELLED because they could not find another crew to fly the plane.
Midnight: Announced that the flight would be rescheduled for 6am the following morning, and that all the boarding passes had to be reissued.
At this point I decided to stay in the airport since it would take at least an hour, if not more, to reissue all the boarding passes, and then travel time to the hotel and back. I figured it just wouldn't be worth it. By the time I got my new boarding pass, it had been 24 hours since I had woken up in Padova and I was exhausted. So I pushed two rows of seats together so I could sleep in the middle where the arm rests wouldn't attack me, and busted out the earplugs, eye mask, and grabbed a couple of blankets.
I actually managed three hours of sleep, but even the ear plugs couldn't fully block out the terrible classical music that played all night.
In the end, I finally made it home (thank goodness!! There was a short time where I was afraid I was going to be stuck in the Philly airport for days). And now, a week later, I think I have finally recovered from it all! Just think, I get to do it all again in about a month.
