So, we returned in the not so early hours of Sunday morning. I do wish the usually tortuous journey back home doesn't put such a downer on the preceding days of holiday. My sister declared on Facebook that she is never getting on a plane with me (actually, she wrote 'palne' but that's because she's one of those pepole without a spellcheque in there broser).We have never actually caught a flight together.
I've been tying to think of stuff that has gone wrong on my not-very-frequent journeys by plane. If it goes wrong, it's usually on the return leg - assuming I don't miss the flight entirely.
Let me think, I didn't ever fly until I was 21. so here goes:
- 1989: New York to Manchester - smooth and on-time
- 1991: Isle of Man to Heathrow Bournemouth - delayed by the 'wrong type of snow' that also stopped trains working; drunken passenger refused to board, refused, initially, to identify luggage, leading to possibility of all other passengers also disembarking to identify our luggage
- 1992: Rome to Manchester - smooth and on time
- 1993: Pisa to Gatwick - delayed by snow; drunken passenger refused to board; refused, initially, to identify luggage, leading to possibility of all other passengers also disembarking to identify our luggage
- 1995: Corfu to Gatwick, slight delay but no problems
- 1995: Isle of Man to Heathrow, twice - no problems
- 1996: Edinburgh to Gatwick, delayed by snow in Amsterdam (as you would be...)
- 1999: Geneva to Gatwick, delayed by snow in Geneva and Amsterdam, plus non-appearance of ladder at Gatwick, and frozen points on Gatwick inter-terminal shuttle
- 1999: Buffalo/Niagara to Boston via Portland - plane cancelled due to burst tire, transferred to direct flight run by rival company but only because nice man sprinted the length of airport after USA National flight computer based in Tampa crashed
- 1999: New York to Heathrow via Frankfurt - delayed three hours due to fault; 'complimetary' sandwich contained meat, only had three Deutschmark and refused to get any more out because a) overdraft maxed out; and b) Deutschmark due to be abolished
- 2000: Glasgow to Gatwick - no problem
- 2001: Manchester to Gatwick - no problem
- 2001: Jersey to Gatwick no problem
- 2002: Havana to Gatwick, turbulence over Cornwall meant no coffee was served for breakfast, stale breakfast made me nauseous
- 2002: Almeria to Gatwick, baggage reclaim delayed by two hours
- 2002: Glasgow to Gatwick, no problem flying, but taxi from Victoria to Pimlico cost £15 at which point Taxi driver suggested I got Tube due to totally stationery traffic on every bridge over Thames
- 2002: Belfast to Gatwick no problem
- 2003: Cairo to Sharm el Sheikh - very scary looking man with gun pacing up and down plane
- 2003: Sharm el Sheikh to Gatwick, no problem
- 2004: Dublin to Gatwick - turbulence over Irish Sea (although not as turbulent as for the Dublin-Manchester flight that my sister and nephew got)
- 2005: Taba to Gatwick, delayed by snow in Amsterdam (probably)
- 2005: Dublin to Gatwick - not a problem
- 2005: Barcelona to Gatwick - take-off made very scary by a seat that automatically reclined...
- 2005: Berlin to Stansted - check-in desk opened very late, so we got drunk while everyone else stood in a queue! (wasn't a problem!)
- 2006: Goa to Gatwick - the plane journey from hell (part one) with one passenger so ill as to need constant supervision and one under arrest in handcuffs; emergency landing was averted because the options were Tehran or Baghdad (allegedly). One meal down
- 2006: Manchester to Heathrow - not a problem
- 2006: Crete to Gatwick - not a problem
- 2007: Sharm el Sheikh to Gatwick Manchester - the definitive plane journey from hell
- 2007: New York to Heathrow - excellent flight, except for Mr Grumpy complaining that I woke him up every time I had to get past him to go to the loo. (And they had forgotten to pack any economy class veggie meals so I had to make do with a first-class one!)
- 2008: Madrid to London City - dream flight
- 2008: Barcelona to Heathrow, good flight, made better by Jimmy being on a later flight! Slightly delayed boarding/take-off but made good time in the air
- 2008: Valencia to Gatwick - a delay which may only have been an hour but seemed a lot longer
- 2009: Alicante to Gatwick - dramatic aborted take-off which was well scary at the time, but was probably quite an everyday procedure.
Although I have probably omitted a couple of journeys, you can see I'm not exactly a frequent flyer, so I'm afraid I don't get to feeling very guilty about my contribution to Global Warming.
It may seem that there is an 'incident' every time I fly, but that isn't actually true. One of my sister's friends went on holiday with a vet friend; there was a call for a doctor, which the vet felt obliged to respond to - someone with a collapsed lung after diving.
My ex-hairdresser went on honeymoon to Cuba and was about to take off from Havana when the plane next to them was hijacked, so they had to disembark and go to a hotel for the duration, where she got bitten by a mosquito and ended up in hospital with blood poisoning and had to complete the journey in a wheelchair.
Someone who worked with my father got hijacked. Not once, but twice. I suppose when you've been hijacked once, the second time, you can be quite blasé, treat it like a walk in the park.
