When Tarun and I book flights, we never take the last flight out of a city. If anything goes wrong with the arrival of the aircraft or the crew times out or there is a mechanical issue, game over unless you love sleeping in an airport chair.
Even with that rule of thumb, every once in a while we’ve got stuck.
Several years ago on a work trip, my return flight was canceled at 11pm after numerous delays. I decided to stay in the airport for the next flight early the next morning, but I was evicted from the secure area when the airport closed. When I got to the nearest available hotel room 25 minutes away, the front desk person warned me that an Uber in the wee hours would be tough to find and recommended I book a cab. Eek?! How does one even do that? Will it take a card? The hotel helped me book one for 3:45 am to give me sufficient wiggle room. After a sleepless night worrying about an oversleeping cab driver, I got back home uneventfully.
Thunderstorms and snowstorms have stranded me in distant cities numerous times and I’ve had to improvise ingenious ways to get home. We have been diverted to Halifax on a transatlantic flight that had a bomb threat. The chaotic domino effect on downstream travel was mind blowing.
The very worst experience was flying from Chicago to Roanoke via Dulles. When I got to Dulles at 9:30pm there was a ground stop due to storms. By the time that lifted three hours later, the crew of the connecting flight timed out. When the new crew arrived, the pilot realized we had to refuel. By now it was 2:30am and neither fuel trucks nor staff were abundant at that hour. I reached Roanoke at 4am, home at 5am. You’d think the universe would give me a pass the next day? Nope. At 11am we left for Dulles to fly to - drumroll - India!
For these stressful moments, I’ve had funny experiences too.
One time I was offloaded for weight balance issue. That was a classic case of LIFO - last (to check) in, first out. As I stepped off the plane I looked at the passengers and asked if they felt safer with me leaving? Nobody raised their hand. QED.
Knowing how challenging travel can be, we planned our trip to Europe with great care. We gave ourselves plenty of time for our flights. We avoided connections and multiple airlines. We opted for morning flights as far as possible because one of Newton’s laws is that aircrafts, crew and weather lose reliability by mid-day. And just in case hell broke loose, there was an AirTag in our check in bag.
We were incredibly proud of ourselves for planning so precisely.
Until…
… a huge blaze at a substation shut down Heathrow airport right before our flight from Lisbon to Heathrow.
I found this out as I rolled over to check the news in the wee hours. “HEATHROW AIRPORT CLOSURE CREATES GLOBAL CHAOS,” screamed my phone.
How on earth can the WHOLE, ENTIRE airport close?! We are talking 1,300 daily flights in and out of Heathrow. We are talking about flights in air from far away places with no place to land. We are talking about London Heathrow for Pete’s sake.
No. Freaking. Way.
I woke up Tarun and announced the catastrophe as calmly as I could.
It went something like this….
OHHHMMMMYGOOOODDDHEATHROWISCLOSED!! At 10,000 decibels.
There is no safety net for one of the major hubs of the world shutting down. None. You cannot plan for this in your wildest imagination!
We called TAP Air Portugal and “Pedro” answered right away in fluent English. Bless the Portuguese for learning the language in school so people like us can function when adrenaline is causing a meltdown. Pedro listened to me carefully, although “Heathrow” was enough for him to pay attention. He put me on a five-minute hold and came back with a reassuring message - our team is already working on rerouting, you’ll just have to be patient and wait to hear from us. If you don’t like the choice we offer, please call us back.
We exhaled. Tarun went back to sleep while I stayed fully wired, eyes the size of planets. Two hours later, just as we were preparing to extend our hotel booking, TAP emailed that we were rebooked on a 16:45 flight to Gatwick on the same day. Clearly, a secret stash of good karma kicked in when we least expected it.
Long story short, we eventually left Lisbon at 18:00 and reached Gatwick in two-ish hours. My cousin and her husband picked us up from the airport, gave us the biggest hugs and made us whole quickly.
Lesson learned is that you simply cannot plan for all contingencies. Expect crap because crap will happen. Be patient. Don’t stack things in ways that you cannot recover from and definitely don’t mix airlines. Most importantly, retire from an active professional life so you can accommodate batshit crazy travel experiences with a smile on your face even as you grit your teeth.
If you aren’t ready to retire, bookend your travel with an extra day. It’ll be like taking an umbrella because it wards off the rain. That is all it takes to soar like a magnificent bird through the friendly skies.
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