Airports

6 hours at Gatwick one year. Dear Lord, help us all.

That helped us to figure it out this year when we had a 11 hour layover.

 

I once had a connecting flight in Newark, NJ. It was a prop plane and the waiting area, which was below the main terminal, was jammed with people. They kept making announcements over the loudspeaker like this:

"Flight 2553 has been cancelled because no flight attendants have shown up."

Or

"Flight 7964 has been cancelled because the pilots are not here."

No further info would be given. I went to my gate twice but the people there were for another flight. They had taken some of them away in a bus to their plane but forgot these people, and someone was nervously calling for another bus to get these people on their plane before it took off!

My flight left about 2 hrs. late. Newark never again!

 

Too often folks don't make it. We had a teen missions team last summer who arrived in Gatwick, flew out of Heathrow, arrived at LHR 20 minutes before their flight to Dublin, but were too late for security. Ten hours at LHR and one of the teen girls had a stomach virus which kept her throwing up all day.

 

My son flew from Dublin to NZ and stopped in Singapore - didn't spend much time at the airport because he spent a day od two with friends there each way. He loved what he saw of the airport though, and LOVED Singapore.

 

One time I was returning from Germany with US Airways to Philadelphia. There was so much snow that they cancelled the flight to Nashville. That worried me because I had to be at work the next day. Then they moved us to Charlotte, NC and the next flight to Nashville was on the next day. US Airways paid for our stay at a NC hotel, phone charges to call employer I would be late, breakfast, and ride to and fro hotel. That was very nice how they arranged that. Since the re-routing to Charlotte made the flight longer we even got more frequent flyer miles out of this. Then on Sunday morning we flew to Nashville. I was scheduled to be at work at 6:00 am and I drove from the airport straight to work and arrived at 8:55 am. My employer has a no-fault attendance policy which means when you're late you get a point. If you have 7n points you go home and you don't have to worry about coming back. But since the snow in Philadelphia was out of my control I did not get a point because this was considered an "act of nature". I for one think it is quite sickening that in the US - the self-proclaimed Christian nation - people by the thousands are required to work on Sundays. It is sickening to see all these popular preachers making a ruckus about posting the Ten Commandments and having school prayer, and supposed pro-family legislation, but really they are neglecting the real pro-family issues: Sunday sanctity, paid FMLA (my baby was in the hospital for 3 weeks in June and I couldn't afford FMLA, so they took my last vacation week and now I can't get time to see my parents), higher minimum wages, etc.

 

I am sorry. I spent what seemed to be days at Heathrow.

Miami drove me insane as well.

 

My another airport experience was when I had a layover in Dallas, Tex and I went on a hot date, going out to eat with a male friend. Got back and thought I was late (if my plane had left, I would have missed it for sure) but thank God almighty, my flight had not left for some weird delay. I think GOd was holding the plane for me.