Jun

23

When the Pilot leaves the headlights on overnight…

June 23, 2007 | | Leave a Comment

You would think that getting up at 4 am to catch a 5:45 am flight would be sufficient – especially when you live less than three minutes from the airport! But alas, conference travel never seems to go easy for me.

In a role reversal from last year’s trip to Memphis for the Laptop Institute, this time it was Delta’s turn to bail out Air Canada when their plane refused to start on the tarmac in the wee hours – something about a dead battery.

While we (myself and four others on our tech mentor team) did manage to make our way – over three hours late – to Toronto on our original aircraft, that’s where the real fun began.

After missing our original scheduled connection to Atlanta – and with the balance of AC’s schedule to Atlanta full for the rest of the day – Air Canada then rescheduled us through Boston, where we would catch a Delta flight to Atlanta. Even though it was kind of a zig zag across the northeast, it wasn’t a bad option, except it would get us in four hours later than scheduled, and a full hour after first pitch in the 3:30 start for the Braves and Tigers.

Ha ha!…not so simple…after our delayed flight was even later than expected, and a wrong turn in the Toronto airport, we missed the flight to Boston. By now, all we could do was laugh!

We put ourselves in the hands of the VERY nice staff at Air Canada who managed to rebook us direct to Atlanta on the competition, Delta. We had just under two hours – which seemed generous – but we needed every second as it turns out. After a quick retrieval of our bags, a rush through customs back into Canada (we never really left but were caught in a kind of no-mans land and had to “re-enter” the country), a quick monorail trip to Terminal 3, and a check in with Delta, we were almost there!

But there’s always a “but”…we arrived in the US customs and immigration line with 30 minutes to spare, but it was a very long and slow moving line…after finally getting released there (again thanks to some nice help from a polite young customs officer) it was off to security…where, despite the fact that we had less than ten minutes to flight time, our group was flagged (I suppose because we were five in the party with last minute tickets)…all our carry on’s were swabbed and searched, we were all patted down, the whole works…

It was then a mad rush to the gate to grab a shuttle bus to take us to our plane, and off we went – with a few minutes to spare…I was quite content to squeeze even into these small seats on the CRJ-200 commuter jets…where I write this while cruising at 31,000 feet above South Carolina or somewhere in the vicinity…

Count ‘em – one late flight, two missed flights, and another almost missed…been an interesting day to say the least….but kudos go out to both the staff at Air Canada and Delta….a special mention goes out to the guy and gal who rebooked our flight and the attendant in the Canada customs area who retrieved our luggage…without them we would be arriving in Atlanta much later than what we will now.

It’s probably still too late for the game, but I might be able to sneak over to the edubloggercon gathering…we’ll see…wither way, I am just glad to be 30 minutes from NECC!

Technorati tags: necc07, necc2007, education, technology, whipple, edubloggercon


Comments

Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-Spam Image