How to be 33 hours late

Day 289 – 290 – La Sagesse, Grenada; Miami & San Francisco, USA

Today, I was leaving Grenada and wishing I could stay longer. Well, I got my wish.

I was dropped off at the airport with plenty of time, I checked my backpack right away, passed the controls, waited at my gate… then came the dreaded announcement: the technical crew had concluded that the tyres had to be changed. The expected delay was at least an hour.

Well, I had only two hours and a half in Miami before my next flight to San Francisco, and in the US you have to pass immigration, get your bag, pass customs, check your bag again, etc. So I approached the lady at the counter and was assured that if I couldn’t make my flight, I would be put on another one.

Okay. And since I was going to be stuck half the night in San Francisco airport because I would arrive right after the end of public transportation running time, arriving later was actually a good thing.

Theoretically.

Because after the delay being extended to a few more hours, the flight to Miami was suddenly cancelled and rescheduled for the next day! (Meantime, I had received automatic rescheduling notices for the next flight, my favourite with a half-day layover in Chicago.)

Stupidly, I didn’t say I needed a hotel (passengers were offered accommodation in a luxury hotel), but at least I got vouchers for free taxi rides. And I will get an hotel in Miami, where I’m going to spend the night. I was also lucky to be able to cancel my first night’s stay in San Francisco.

The taxi was happy to get my fare to drop me back to where I was staying… But after hemming and hawing, finally told me that he wouldn’t get me the next morning. When I had specifically told him that I needed him to. (Fortunately we found a solution.)

So… next day, second try: back to the airport, checked my bag, checked the boards… My plane wasn’t on it, but at this point I wasn’t even worried, except when I realized that my gate wasn’t written on my new boarding pass, the screenboard wasn’t cooperating, and at the check-in I wasn’t told where to go.

That said, there are only five gates in a small space, so I wasn’t really worried, and I asked the staff who sent me on the right one (the same as yesterday’s).

Soon, a new announcement warned of one hour’s delay. We finally boarded for a take-off at 3 pm instead of 2 pm. Waited a bit. Taxied. Waited. Then were told that we didn’t have the right take-off number, the pilot couldn’t call from the runway as there wasn’t any service, and we had to go back to the gate to call headquarters.

Back to the gate to wait some more. And wait. The pilot was great about letting us know what was happening, how it was important to have the right number and everything.

We went back to the runway for a second attempt. Then the onboard computer announced a technical problem, so no take-off. And back to the gate. At this point we had been sitting in the plane for close to three hours, and we were offered the possibility to deplane to stretch our legs (it is mandatory to allow the passengers to deplane after four hours of wait). At the four-hours limit, we had more opportunity to go out.

Apparently, the glitch was so strange that they had to call Airbus in France to have answers. They concluded that the computer was generating false problem diagnostics and that everything was fine, so they rebooted the computer in the hope of resolving that. Part of the problem-solving was also to rev the engines, so we were forewarned not to worry about the noise.

Finally, we took off at 6:30 pm.

We landed in Miami without further troubles around 10:40 pm (local time), the controls were amazingly quick, I got my bag quickly, made my way out of the airport.

At this point I only wanted to crash in my hotel, so I totally forgot to get to the customer service desk to get my voucher, especially since I had received an email with the confirmation and reservation code, as well as electronic vouchers for food.

I found the place to wait for the hotel shuttle, we arrived at the hotel… and the clerk at the check-in counter wanted a paper voucher, which everyone else had, and advise me to call the airline to get the code written on the voucher. (She didn’t accept my email booking code.)

So I called the airline (it was closing on midnight at this point), with the stress and the fatigue crashing over me and making me want to get hysterical, especially knowing I was going to have to get up at 4:30 am for my next flight to San Francisco, and was told by the representative that everything was electronic these days, they didn’t use paper vouchers anymore (as if!), and the hotel had to get in touch with corporate if they couldn’t work with my email. Hysterical, I tell you.

By this point the queue at the check-in had cleared, I got a new clerk, who took my reservation number and checked me in in under a minute. Figure.

I arrived in my executive-level room, with high, soft bed, tea and coffee making amenities, and decided to look at the tea selection for tonight and the next morning… there were 4 different coffee packets, but only two teabags, chamomile (no) and English breakfast (no again). No Earl Grey, and of course I was out of Earl Grey in my own stash. 

So I got a very, very short night; I was looking forward to sleep in the plane, or at least to finish yesterday’s movie -I stopped half-way through to nap a bit. But I got a plane without individual screens, where my knees were touching the seat in front of me -I stopped the guy from reclining his seat-, and the only positive thing was that I hadn’t a neighbour in the adjacent seat.

Moreover, I was in the middle of the plane, so when we banked over San Francisco, I had no way to have a look. (In my initial online check-in, I hadn’t looked to have a window seat because it was going to be the middle of the night.)

We eventually landed, roughly 33 hours later than the original time.

Featured above: downtown San Francisco, seen from the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. You will see the shadow of the bridge on the sea on the right of the picture.