Our trip began simply enough with an uneventful 75 minute drive to Port Columbus
International Airport. We have three airports to choose from within a two hour drive of Coshocton (Columbus, Akron-Canton, and Cleveland) but typically fly out of Columbus. We parked the car in the Red Lot, shuttled to the terminal, cleared security and made it to our gate with time to spare. The stewardesses arrived, the pilots arrived, all the out-bound passengers arrived...all we needed was an airplane to fly in. Unfortunately, our airplane didn't arrive until an hour and a half after we were supposed to leave!The airline did get the airplane unloaded and cleaned, and then loaded us on board in about 40 minutes. Then it was off to Atlanta where, because of the departure delay, Karen and I hurried from one terminal to the next in order to get to the gate where they were already boarding our connecting flight to Orange County. At least there was a plane at the gate!
We made it on board, buckled up, and caught our breath as there were only a few minutes left before the plane was to push away from the gate. It was very warm inside the plane and it was
only getting hotter as departure time arrived. Just then the stewardess came over the PA system to apologize for the heat: "We apologize for the heat," she said, "but we don't have any pilots to turn on the air-conditioning system. In fact, we don't know where our pilots are, but we're trying to find some." That's nice. A fully loaded airplane. No pilots. 90 minutes later our pilots arrived and thirty minutes later we departed on what turned out to be the most turbulent four hour flight we'd ever experienced.Along with that...the personal video systems didn't work, they ran out of food before they got to our row, and we were seated in the very aromatic section next to the lavatories. Delightful.
But praise the Lord, we landed in Orange County late but safe, picked up our rental car without any problem and drove up to Dad's where Karen and I were staying the weekend.
In Columbus we had pilots but no airplane. In Atlanta we had a fully-loaded airplane but no pilots!
2 comments:
I love the way God throws these little lovelies at us to keep our sense of humor.
Hey chocolatechic,
Yes, we did laugh about it. Actually, the flight attendants and pilots were really good about the whole situation and all the passengers took it in stride.
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