Habari,
I was scheduled to depart from the Philadelphia International Airport at 6:10pm on USAirways, heading for Nairobi. I cruised through check-in and security with ease and was sitting at the gate a full 2 hours before the flight! This was unheard of for me. I usually have just enough time to pull out my ticket and give it to the gate crew as I fly down the ramp. I was really excited. The first sign of trouble came when they changed the gate 30 minutes before we were scheduled to board.
Next, the departure time changed from 6:10pm to 6:40pm. Then the gate agent's voice came over the intercom to inform us that the plane was now scheduled to ARRIVE in Philly at 7:30pm. Ugh! As I tried to maintain my composure, the gate area started to fill with children. Now you all know i love children (wink, wink), but i just don't feel they should be allowed to infiltrate certain parts of society until they've reached a certain age. LOL. Just kidding. First there was the little girl chatting very loudly with her grandmother on a cell phone, which amused her mother. Yes, my eyes were rolling people.
Second, there was a lively group of tween girls who loved to sing like Britney Spears and made a sport of singing several verses of the song until their adoring mothers could guess the title. Really? Then it happened. A cranky infant showed up with his two young exhausted parents, who hand no clue of how to pacify the child to keep him quiet. Could these crazy people really be thinking of taking a cranky baby on a transatlantic flight to Brussels? As panic rose in my throat, I wondered if the parents understood what torture that would be for the child and the trapped passengers...well, mainly me but that beside the point.
As I was about to flee the gate area, the plane showed up...early! Well, 25 minutes before it's anticipated delayed arrival. I was thrilled to get this show on the road and I had a connecting flight in Brussels, Belgium that I didn't want to miss. Boarding the flight was long, but I actually got a preferred seat (7A), because I like to sit close to the door and I must have a window seat. Yes, I need to be at a vantage point where I can see the earth hurling towards me if the plane falls out of the sky. LOL. And if by chance we land softly in the ocean, I want to be one of the first passengers out of the door. Hey, it could happen! Captain Scully landed his plane in the Hudson.
Any who, when I reached my seat, it was one of those window seats WITHOUT A WINDOW!! I'm not kidding. SMH. The guy next to me could see my disbelief and could only smile. Thank God the plane wasn't full so once the boarding completed, I was able to move to 5A, which had a window and an empty seat next to it. I was thrilled! Then I looked across the aisle and there was the cranky baby and his exhausted parents. OMG!
Believe it or not, that isn't the most worrisome thing that happened at that moment. It was now after 8pm and we were all wondering why the plane hadn't closed the door. The pilot came over the loud speaker to inform us that a couple decided not to go to Brussels. WTF! Now I just want to fight because I couldn't even get off the plane to explore other options. Since their bags were loaded on the plane, the bag handlers had to locate the bags and pull them off the flight. REALLY?
Now anybody who has flown into or out of Philly and particularly with USAirways, knows that the baggage crew was going to LOVE doing this. While the rest of our bags were carelessly thrown around in a union-anger induced flurry, time just kept ticking away. Needless to say, we were not airborne until 9:30pm. SMH.
So you know what happened, right? When I arrived in Brussels some 7 hours later, I was met by the gate agent with a ticket rerouting me to London, some 5 hours later with a connecting flight to Nairobi, 5 hours after that! I wanted to scream, but I was too tired. :-(. I don't know if I was just being a good travel citizen or if I was in a coma, but the rest of my trip was a blur. I remember hanging out in Starbucks in Brussels with my feet up reading a book. I also remember yelling at a woman in London Heathrow for boldly trying to steal my seat.
And lastly, I remember sitting at an oyster bar sipping champagne while staring at the Gucci store, which had a BEAUTIFUL bag I had never seen. Now, I thought this part may have been a dream, but when I found the card of the Gucci store manager in my pocket when I got on the plane, I realized I had avoided a nightmare of a different kind. That bag was fabulous!
I arrived in Nairobi the next morning at 8am severely sleep deprived and delirious. I was met at the airport by Master Pu and his driver. They took me to my hotel and I was instructed to go get some sleep... so we could have a dinner meeting. WTH! So it begins.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the final installment of this week's, On Assignment In Nairobi where I will talk about my first full day in Nairobi.
Della Rochelle
Copyright (c) 2011 by Della R. Williams
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