A Rough Start

Let me start by saying all is well, and we’re indeed “on the road.”

But our first travel day was a challenge.

It all started so well. Our own perky, personal Lyft driver (niece Jill) showed up right on time and got us to the airport with lots of time to spare. We boarded and departed a bit early.

We flew northeast and got to see lots of snow-covered mountains and endless miles of the snowy and frozen north of Canada.

And then things turned complicated. Especially for one unfortunate man on our plane who suffered a severe asthma attack and passed out.

We were in that phase of overseas flights when the lights have been dimmed and everyone is trying desperately to get some sleep as we wing across multiple time zones. Suddenly the lights came on—an unusual thing for sure. And there were people standing in the aisles. Lots of people. Also odd. Three burly guys forced their way through the folks standing in our aisle, walked forward, and passed in front of the people seated in the bulkhead row, to the other aisle and back to an area just two rows behind us.

At this point, we noticed a man standing with a stethoscope draped around his neck and a woman with rubber gloves on. Now things are starting to fall in place, and we understand there is some kind of medical emergency. The three big guys scoop up a man with an oxygen mask on and carry him to the front of the plane where they can have more room and presumably use one of the seats that lie flat into a bed.

We were still heading north and east. But everyone is up and buzzing. There would be precious little sleep for most of the 300 people on our flight.

About a half hour later, the captain came onto the loudspeaker and announced that we were being diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul so that our patient could receive medical care. By this time, we were just passing north of the western edge of Hudson Bay. Trust me when I tell you there was no evidence of habitation anywhere near us—but Minneapolis? Turns out Minneapolis was due south of our location and was a Delta hub. But it was also several hours away and not exactly on our trajectory toward Amsterdam.

So here is where plans started to unravel for everyone on the plane. I didn’t hear a soul complain or question the decision. Nonetheless, sleep was vanquished for the foreseeable future, and everyone was trying to calculate potential options.

We eventually landed in MSP, our patient was removed into the arms of waiting emergency personnel, and then we waited for Delta to make its determination of how the situation would be handled. A pair of maintenance workers came onboard to install new oxygen tanks and to replace medical supplies that had been used—a necessity before our plane would be allowed to fly again.

Still we waited. We knew that one option would be for our flight to continue. Another would be for us all to deplane, claim our bags, and Delta to rebook us out of MSP. Complicating things was the fact that our crew could not complete the trip because of rules concerning hours, etc.—they were no longer “legal to go over big water,” as the captain said.

The final decision—and the right one we think— was that we would keep the flight intact—all 300 of us and our bags. But we needed a new crew. This is where it got stranger. We flew to Detroit to pick them up. Our existing crew could go that far. New pilots and attendants were most likely awakened requesting their service. In DTW, we bid our original crew farewell and welcomed the new one. But all this took time, more time than estimated. We were on the ground in Detroit around 2 hours before taking to the skies again, getting a de-icing as we taxied out to a runway. We left around 3:15am. (One nice aspect of this was a flight almost the length of Lake Erie, beautiful nighttime views of Cleveland, and the half moon reflected in the lake.)

Seven hours later, we arrived in Amsterdam. A 4:30pm arrival vs. our expected 8:30am. Three hundred anxious people queuing up to talk to gate agents. Those of us who had had connecting flights were sent in different directions depending on ultimate destinations. We had been rebooked on an 8:35pm flight to Barcelona. We used a self-service kiosk to print new boarding passes and then had to wait 4 more hours. But at least—after 19 hours on our original plane—we were on the ground and out of those confining seats. Since we had turbulence for over half the DTW-AMS flight, we had been strapped in and unable to move around.

We had emailed our Barcelona hotel from Minneapolis to give them a heads up. Once we knew our rebooked flying time, we emailed them again to let them know we’d be arriving at the hotel after midnight.

We had a pretty bumpy flight to Barcelona, but were greatly relieved to finally be there.

This is not our first rodeo, so I am not sure how things continued to unravel, but they did. Probably because we were supremely rummy. We’d been enroute for about 27 hours, and not unstressful ones either. The problem: we were directed by some (hopefully) well-meaning person to the wrong baggage claim carousel. We ended up in a line to deal with missing luggage. We ultimately tracked them down to a cart of unclaimed bags from the correct carousel. But, of course, Jerry ‘s bag had been visited by TSA, and his front pocket was left unlocked. When we found it, the pocket was about half unzipped. Amazingly, two out of the three items were still there. We spent some time trying to work with an agent about the missing item, but declined to proceed when we were told we’d have to file a police report. Really?

We dragged ourselves and our bags to a taxi stand and made it to our hotel around 1:00am. Once we got to the room and I saw myself in a mirror, I was surprised they didn’t tell us we had come to the wrong place. Their mercy and acceptance will forever be appreciated.

So now we’re in Barcelona and picking up the itinerary we had planned—a little worse for wear, but recuperating. My goodness, we are not as young as we once were!