So I was all set to fly back for Andrew and Cate's wedding on 1/8 but I should have known that since I was flying US Airways, it wasn't going to go smoothly. Yes I have a dislike for US Air but still use them a lot, since I have A) built up a decent amount of miles w/ them, B) they fly to Charlotte and a lot of places on the east coast and 3) I am stubborn and don't always learn - I prefer to think of it as giving them a second, third , fourth... chance.
I got to Heathrow a few hours before the flight and learned pretty soon that the flight was already delayed an hour. Love getting up early on a Saturday when I don't have to. When we finally did board to leave, we were slightly over an hour behind and there were several rumors concerning why we were late. I had an aisle seat next to a guy whos brother was behind me, so they asked me if I would switch... Sure. Then I had a middle seat next two a 6 year old whose mother was holding an infant and sitting behind her. So she asked me if I would switch. Sure. So I went back to an aisle seat, cool. However I was infront of a 18-20 yr old guy who apparently couldn't stop kicking my seat (seriously I thought he was going to be 5 years old when I turned around to see what was going on). Oh and he just had to coninutously hit on the fairly plain, fairly unintelligent Canadian girl next to him, for the entire flight... It would have been funny if I hadn't been so tired. So thanks to them - another 6+ hr flight where I couldn't fall asleep. At least I could read - an entire book on the flight.
After the majority of the flight was complete and we were approaching the US - the Captain decided to share with us the news. We had been flying with a flight crew of two (instead of the normal three) since one of the crew had a sudden death in the family. Apparently a substitute couldn't be found (really... in London, with 5 or 6 airports around, the airline didn't have a standby pilot just in case... great). Since weather had delayed our plane coming from the US to London by an hour (hence why we were late leaving), our Captain informed us we would be making a stop in Boston, before our planned termination in Philadelphia.
In case you are a bit lost, or had to reread that last prargraph a couple of times, let me try and explain. We had to stop in Boston to take on a replacement flight crew and a bit more fuel (fuel is always good!). Since our flight was delayed, the 2 man flight crew didn't have enough approved flying time per the FAA to get us all the way to Philly. In Boston we were not allowed to deplane or anything. You know, what with customs and all.
So we finally did get to Philly (where several people caught connections back to Boston...) and I, of course, had missed my connection. So I was put on the next flight down to Charlotte, not the 6:40 departure I had but a 9:50 flight... Or so I thought. We boarded that flight and taxied out, only to be informed that there were AT LEAST 12 planes ahead of us... After waiting about an hour, we had to return to the gate (but could not deplane). It seems the weather was making our scheduled flight plane impassable, our plane's computer had to be rebooted (??!?) and we needed some more fuel (of course!).
We had to be hooked to the ground power for the reboot and it took 2 or 3 times (I guess the blue screen of death finally was pruged from the instrument panel...). We taxied out and finally got under way. About 1:00am Joe picked me up from the airport and I was finally in Charlotte. So I got up at about 9 am in London (4 am EST) and got to sleep about 130am EST (630 London time...).
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