Nice topic!

23/24/25 December 2000, I was stuck in MXP and LOS... oy...

Our plans were to fly to ACC on December 23rd (from AMS) to visit a beautiful Christmas Wedding of a friend of mine in Ghana. We (me and gf) were scheduled to arrive somewhere in the beginning of the evening of the 23rd of December. Yet, our direct flight AMS-ACC got cancelled already the day before departure (the next day we understood why... sandstorm). We where put on an early AZ flight to catch a connecting flight in MXP. Yet, the connection was a little on the tight side (45min), but doable for MXP as the change of terminals is pretty easy there (that is, if you run ).

But of course, evil struck and we departed late in AMS. And so we missed our connection causing us to spend the night in Milan for a next-day departure. As the wedding was scheduled to take place on December 25th, no harm was done.

After a good night's sleep we were on our way to ACC, with the usual quick stop in LOS to drop off some pax. The captain came over the PA and told us we wouldn't be able to depart due to a sand storm currently afflicting the Ghanian coast. We'd have to spend the night at Lagos... the only problem was that the sun had already set. If you have ever been to Nigeria, you'll know what this meant. The streets get very dangerous at night, and Nigerians often advise tourists to stay inside when it’s dark outside.

Let me just say we ended up spending Christmas Eve at the Sheraton, but it only took us 4 and a half hours to get there! We insisted on being escorted to our hotel, and I am still very grateful for the help of the agents at the airport who we very understanding to all pax, most people in Y had to spend Christmas Eve at the airport, now that is really bad.

However, the sandstorm lasted at least another day so we missed the wedding. And I feel very bad for my friend as his wedding was heavily disrupted by this sand storm. I do realize we have been quite lucky as we could have been off a lot worse considering some people had no choice but to stay in the terminal for the night.

If I had known that the KL flight was cancelled because of the storm we would probably have stayed at home. Yet on the upside this lesson has helped me on many other flights inbound West Africa