PSP-DFW(ORD)-LHR
Pitched up at Palm Springs airport at 9.30am, dropped the car off and walked into the terminal, as i'm walking through i notice the inbound flight is scheduled in an hour late.
At the check in, the AA agent is on the ball, he's noticed i'm on an international connection, we discuss the delay and i tell him i'm comfortable with the delay as Dallas is a good airport for changing terminals, he tells me if the delay gets significantly worse he will page me and route us through Chicago instead, little did i know at this point i'd be going there anyway.
The delay got a little worse and the 11.25am flight eventually closed the doors at 12.45. A good run into DFW meant we hit the gate 45 minutes behind schedule and we still had an hour to change terminals and grab a bite to eat.
When the flight attendant reads out the list of connecting gates on the plane, i wonder why they never seem to give out international destinations, i knew it was likely to be the D terminal, but theres no reason why it had to be and confirmation would have been nice.
When we reached the gate for the LHR flight at boarding time, they announced boarding would be a little delayed, but not to worry as we had strong tail winds and with a sub 8 hour flying time, would still be arriving an hour early.
I guess they havent heard about the Heathrow effect, arrive in the area an hour early and you are guaranteed a scenic tour of south east England.
We eventually got off the ground at 8pm, 50 minutes late.
I was delighted to see we had the same flight attendant serving us as we had on the flight out, she was a real diamond, she seemed to instinctively know which passengers to interact and share a joke with and those who wanted to be left alone. Her anecdotes helped to keep us amused later on in the flight.
About an hour into the flight, and before dinner had been served, the captain came on and made an announcement. He said that due to toilet blockages we were going to divert into Chicago and change planes and that they had a plane available for us. The Purser then came on and she fleshed (not flushed) out the announcement by explaining that 3 toilets were blocked already and they didnt want to risk an unpleasant situation developing later in the flight.
The plane incidentally was a 767, not my favourite plane as it doesnt have seatback TV's like the 777, but for an overnight flight its not really an issue as sleep is the priority. I do miss the chance to look at the map though.
As we are approaching Chicago the captain comes on and explains that we will be doing an overweight landing as obviously we were fuelled to cross the Atlantic and that there were procedures to be followed. This would entail the runway being lined with fire engines and that we should not worry as this was standard practice and precautionary. We thumped down at ORD at about 9.45 pm.
The purser asked us to remain in our seats for a moment whilst they checked with the authorities how they wanted to deal with the transfer of passengers onto the new plane as technically we had left the country. We were also asked to keep hold of our boading passes.
I was expecting us to pull up on an adjacent gate and be sheparded straight onto the new plane. Not so.
We pulled up at gate K9 and were asked to walk across to gate K16. There they told us boarding would start in 20 mins once everybody was at the gate and anybody needing a new boarding pass had approached the desk so that they could check us onto the new plane.
I decided to go for a walk to see if i could have simply walked out of the airport and surprise, surprise i easily could have done just that.
I realise that the passenger manifest would have shown me as not on board but by then i could have been far way. I guess i was surprised by the trusting nature of it all, not something i'm used to in U.S airports.
When boarding was called, youve never seen a plane board so quickly and efficiently, since the plane was the same configuration, everybody knew where their seat was and that there would be space in the overhead bins, in less than 15 minutes we were all sat down and ready to go, unfortunately the plane wasnt. In fact it was more than another hour before we pulled back from the gate.
Now this is where a good crew comes into its own and we were fortunate enough to have one. We were constantly updated as to what was going on and why. The purser explained the problems of transferring the catering from the previous flight. The captain explained the extra maintenance tests that had to be done for a flight over water and why we would be hearing the engines being started up and shutdown to test for leaks. When the maintenance logs were signed off we were finally on our way.
When the drinks cart came round we wanted a nightcap and i had $12 ready but the flight attendant said im not taking your money after what we just put you through.
We eventually landed at Heathrow about 2 hours late and i had to get the Chauffer parking people to go fetch the car.
When i got home i emailed AA to tell thm how well the crew had handled the situation and in particular how good our flight attendant was. They replied by email and later by letter and rewarded me with 20,000 miles for the inconvenience. I was pretty surprised, and of course pleased as the thrust of my email was to compliment, not complain.
Well thats it for holiday 1, in a few weeks its on to holiday 2, as Moomba puts it, in the pointy end. Stay tuned