I began my trip to Puerto Rico from an old spot from the past -- the Marriott at Hunt Valley. I picked up a shuttle to BWI at 7:30 am for our 11:am flight to Philadelphia for a 1:35 connecting flight to San Juan, which was scheduled to land at 5:18 pm. Wheels down in San Jose was at 8:30 that evening -- a three hour delay.
The delay was attributable to several factors. The first was the weather. The storm that moved over Baltimore while we were waiting for our flight continued to move northeast and eventually closed the Philadelphia airport. We were given a 12:45updated departure for Philadelphia, which we made. We then headed across the airport for the gate for our flight to San Juan. We were then informed that the jetway to get the people off our aircraft and us onto the aircraft was not working. Estimated time to repair this was originally 3 hours. Needless to say, they came up with an alternative plan, which was to move the airplane to another gate. Next problem, what gates were open? We thought we lucked out when they told us they would move the plane to the gate next to us. Eventually they moved the plane, got the people off and told us we would be ready to go after they cleaned and catered the plane, which was to be about 20 minutes.
We boarded the aircraft and thought we were set to go. From my aisle seat in the Emergency Exit aisle (an old trick) I saw the captain get off the airplane carrying his briefcase. From previous experience I had seen this before and I kind of had an idea of what to expect. A few minutes later the first officer came on and made an announcement saying that the original pilot (the guy I saw walking off)was over his scheduled flight hours and could not legally fly the plane. Now we had a full aircraft completely boarded and ready to take off but nobody to fly it!
Eventually we got a pilot and pushed back around 5:15 pm. I thought we were on the way. Wrong. We began to taxi toward the runway and stopped. We were then informed that New Jersey Trafcon had a hold on releasing any more traffic into the immediate airspace because of congestion in the area. We were given another 20 minute hold. Eventually we were airborne.
After climbing through some turbulence we reached our cruising altitude. There was no view from the windows -- the cloud cover below was too thick to even see the ocean. Time to sit back, relax and read. Wrong again. I had a baby in front of me who screamed most of the flight, with another one behind me who joined in the chorus. To "soothe" the baby in front of me, the mother decided to hold the baby and use her seat directly in front of me, as a rocking chair. The noise of the seat rocking back and forth plus the 2 babies wailing made it somewhat difficult to read. After a while, it stopped.
As mentioned, we had wheels down at 8:30 pm and then taxied to the gate. We met the vans - one for luggage and one for us and headed to the school. We had a brief introduction. Some people went out to eat but Stacey, Casey, Jessica, and I had the original Puerto Rican dish delivered to the dorm -- Domino's Pizza. So much for our arrival to San Juan.
No comments:
Post a Comment