Part of my job calls for travel a handful of times each year; something that aside from being away from my boys, I mostly enjoy doing. This year, I have traveled to Birmingham and this last week, I was in Atlanta. The company I work for spares no expense at these things, so I always end up with a nice hotel room and great food – if you don’t count the 14 hour days, it sort of feels like a vacation!
Looking forward to my stay at a 5 star hotel after being chauffeured in a towncar, I packed my bags and hopped in the car with my boys who were waiting to take me to the airport. For weeks, I had been explaining to Clark that I was going to be gone for a few days, and when he started saying ‘Momma go to Georgia’, I thought the odds for a tear-free goodbye were looking good. So once we arrived at the curb outside the airport, I kissed Ryan goodbye and opened the door to the backseat to see my sweet boy sitting in his carseat with silent tears falling down his cheeks. It was at that moment that I considered quitting my job and never leaving the house again, but reason got the best of me and I somehow mustered up the courage to walk away from the car and through the entire airport sobbing like a crazy woman.
Before long, a plane arrived and it was time to get on it. Trying to shake the sight of those tears on those sweet cheeks, I chuckled to myself after realizing that yet again, my short little legs were granted an exit row seat, with precious inches of completely wasted on me leg room. I believe that makes my total 5 out of 6 flights this year where I received angry glares from tall people as they walked past me to their average leg room seat. After buckling up and following along with the safety card (I take exit row responsibility seriously!), we were taxiing down the runway and in the air! Our captain had told us that the previous flight was smooth except for some storms in Atlanta, so I was expecting more of the same.
About 3 minutes after being airborne, there was a deafening noise inside the fuselage – alarms were sounding, people were bouncing around while seatbelts were on, we could feel the cargo hitting the floor beneath our feet, and very faintly, we heard the voice of the captain on the intercom. What we couldn’t hear was anything that he said because everything else was so loud. I am a calm flyer – I understand how closely monitored planes and pilots are, as well as how miniscule the odds of anything going wrong are. But nonetheless, I firmly wrapped my hands around the armrests and stared out my window until the gray and black of the massive clouds we were inside of dissipated to calm blue.
About 3 minutes after being airborne, there was a deafening noise inside the fuselage – alarms were sounding, people were bouncing around while seatbelts were on, we could feel the cargo hitting the floor beneath our feet, and very faintly, we heard the voice of the captain on the intercom. What we couldn’t hear was anything that he said because everything else was so loud. I am a calm flyer – I understand how closely monitored planes and pilots are, as well as how miniscule the odds of anything going wrong are. But nonetheless, I firmly wrapped my hands around the armrests and stared out my window until the gray and black of the massive clouds we were inside of dissipated to calm blue.
Not realizing that my husband was unaware of the ability to text and send Facebook messages from the newer planes, I recounted my harrowing tale and he said ‘You already landed?’ ‘No – we are still in the air’ ‘They let you send texts from a plane now?’ ‘Are you crashing?’ Unfortunately for him, my response to the ‘They let you send texts from a plane now?’ question didn’t send until after I had received ‘Are you crashing?’, so my answer of ‘Yes’ did nothing to comfort him. About the time I had it cleared up that yes we can text, and no we are not crashing, the pilot came back to say, and I quote, ‘Folks, it’s about to get bad, and it will be bad until we are on the ground in 40 minutes.’ And he was not wrong. It was the worst flight I have ever been on, and it’s not until you land after a flight like that that you realize your return flight is Friday the 13th.
I was more than relieved to see that my hotel room lived up to my hopes, because after a flight like that, I contemplated moving in permanently.
After settling in, I rested up for the next few days, as we had a packed schedule. Wednesday and Thursday were very long and tiring, but overall, it was a good conference. That leads me to the last day, and the prospect of boarding a plane on Friday the 13th after almost dying on one on Tuesday the 10th. I woke up like this:
Who gets pink eye in a 5 star hotel, nowhere near a germy little kid? Apparently, I do. Point you, Friday the 13th. Luckily with my glasses on, it wasn’t terribly visible, so I got packed up and headed down to finish off the week before heading to the airport. My flight was scheduled to leave at 9:45pm, but I had managed to get on standby for the 3:30pm flight. The course ended literally right next to the airport, so it would be a short commute once we were dismissed. A classmate of mine had an app that told him where each plane taking off overhead was en route to, and details about the plane itself. Keeping with the theme of the day, he informed me that my standby flight was the one directly over my head as we unloaded at the airport, meaning I was in for a 6 hour wait until my next flight. Loving airports, I took my time through security, got a snack, and settled in at the gate where this exact flight had left from the previous 6 nights.
As I waited and chatted with those around me, I received a text that my flight was actually going to be from a different terminal, so I would need to take the elevator 3 floors down and board the tram to get to the next concourse over. No problem. I did all of those things, and exited the tram to find that the elevator in the new terminal was broken, and I would have to take an escalator, that I am deathly afraid of, THREE STORIES up to the concourse. Apparently, when you are destined to die on Friday the 13th, it doesn’t matter if it is by plane or escalator. Hands shaking, I finally stepped on after watching 10 ascending stairs pass me by, held on for dear life, and didn’t look up until I had to jump off so as to not be one of the people on the news who get sucked into the stairs of death.
Having survived that, I endured two more gate changes over the course of 2 hours until the screen at the gate I was at said my home city on it. I sat, along with 50 others, and watched the delay keep growing and growing and growing until it was no longer Friday the 13th, rather, Saturday the 14th, and I was still in the airport. The plane that they sent us from Pennsylvania had ‘mechanical issues’ and was delayed four hours, which meant our pilot was ‘timed out’ and had to have a mandatory rest period (good rule!). They assured us not to worry, as they had requested a backup pilot, and our first officer (who looked to be pre-pubescent) was already on the plane. Turns out that when a backup is requested, they have two hours to accept or decline the flight, and then an additional two hours to arrive at the airport. Our super awesome replacement pilot accepted with 7 minutes left in the first two hours, and then the clock started for his two hour window to arrive. This is where things went downhill.
Nobody likes to be delayed at the airport. I had been there for 8 hours at this point, and the people I was sitting with had been there for 15 hours. We all wanted to get home; none more than the older couple who repeatedly loudly announced that the following day was the husband’s 60th birthday, and he wanted to be well rested before his party. Seriously. That’s a direct quote from the 60 year old. Complaining to all of us was not enough to get things off of his chest, so he called the airline, and obnoxiously pointed his cell phone in the face of every gate agent around, telling them he was getting their photos so that he could have them fired. After hours of listening to this couple act worse than the 4 year old who was also on our flight, a lady who hadn’t said a word prior had enough:
Nice Lady: Why don’t you sit down, shut up, and wait for the pilot like the rest of us?
Birthday Boy: I travel every week –
Nice Lady: Then you should be thankful that you get to travel and see the world! Seriously – that’s ENOUGH!
Birthday Boy: Yeah? Well you’re not getting home tonight!
Second Nice Lady: You need to be thankful that you have a home! All these people are losing theirs to hurricanes and fires and you are being obnoxious about having to wait. So SHUT UP!
Birthday Boy’s Wife: No! YOU shut up! He’s 60 and isn’t going to be able to rest before his party!
With that, we sarcastically all sang him happy birthday; he cringed and his wife beamed with pride, taking all of the credit for organizing this chorus for her husband. It was now 3 hours after the reserve pilot accepted the job, and off of the plane walked the First Officer, who had been sitting on it for six hours waiting for his counterpart, and had now also timed out and needed to rest. It was 2am, our flight had been rescheduled for 6am with two new pilots, and they were offering hotel vouchers and putting people on standby for the 10pm flight the next night. Birthday Boy and his wife took the hotel and the later flight, while the rest of us, including a couple with a small baby, settled in and waited it out.
By 5am, I was bruised from rib to rib from trying to sleep on the airport floor, exhausted from not being able to sleep on said floor, I had been at the airport for 14 hours, and I had freaking pink eye, but I was boarding a plane to head home! It was a much less eventful flight, I had been upgraded to a comfy seat, and I even got the privilege of watching the sun rise over the horizon.
After I returned home to my boys, a co-worker told me about a flight the same day (Friday the 13th), to Helsinki, whose airport code is HEL, and the flight just so happened to be #666. I am not terribly superstitious, but after my week, HEL no!
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