JFK - BOM in 28 hours
That's right. A trip that should take around 14 hours doubled into 28. Here's the story.
Snowstorm is about to hit NYC so I get out early to the airport. Reach at around 2, check-in, security and hanging about by 3. Flight departs at 6.
We're all on the plane and JFK starts getting raped by snow. It takes two hours to get the plane moving and then de-iced. So we leave by around 8PM. Around half an hour after we leave, JFK shuts down.
Delay : 2 hours
All goes well and we reach Brussels an hour late but that's alright since I still have an hour to catch my flight to Bombay. So we get into the holding pattern over Brussels with visibility at nil. Captain Oliver informs us that we can do this for two hours if we have to. An hour later, Brussels shuts down.
Delay : 3 hours
So we head over to the alternate airport 10 minutes away.
Liege.
I know you have no idea where that is. Well, a bit southwest of Brussels, Liege would be the transit point between Earth and Eternal Doom.
There's pretty much nothing at Liege airport. Four tortured souls comprise the ground staff and the only excitement around is the large TNT logistics hub. Mainly a freight airport, the place didn't even have facilities to offload luggage. Belgian authorities didn't want us to get off the plane anyways (not even the Belgian citizens, some of whom lived 30 mins away). So there we were, stuck in Liege, sitting on the plane waiting for Brussels to open up again.
2 hours later, Liege shuts down.
So now with both Liege and Brussels closed, the situation becomes pretty aggravating. Note that throughout all this there's a baby crying a row ahead of me. It wouldn't stop throughout the entire flight/ordeal.
Adding to Liege's reputation of 'Gateway to Hell', it has no food. The pilot was gracious enough to procure something from somewhere (apparently a catering company). What it ended up being was a bun (a third the size of a normal bun) with a slice of ham (the 'non-vegetarian' option) or cheese (the 'vegetarian' option). I wish I had taken a photo of this thing. It was so small you could drop it in the aisle and you'd need a torch to find it. That's what they managed to organize after four and a half hours of sitting on the apron in Liege.
2 hours later (now we've been here for more than 6 hours, still in the plane), the new captain (Captain Oliver exceeded the maximum permissible flying hours for his day) announced Brussels was open. Hey, this is great news! We should be out of here in minutes! The plane was de-iced and then we waited to get going.
But no.
Being Liege, gateway to hell, they didn't have a pushback truck with the adapter to attach to an Airbus (hell has obviously been privatized by an American company). So they had to send for one from god-knows-where.
Well it did finally arrive eventually. Our new douchebag captain didn't realize that the plane would ice up again and he had to begin de-icing all over again after we did push back. This was to be expected.
So we flew the 10 minutes back to Brussels. It was a beautiful 10 minutes though. Rural Belgium, covered in snow, at an orange sunset, and we were hardly a few thousand feet up thanks to our bus-ride-like-trip.
Delay : 10 hours
So we arrive at Brussels and are instructed to go to B40 to figure out the situation. The flight to Bombay left hours ago, so they had no option but to send us to -
Chennai. Jet Airways being the only airline flying to India out of Brussels.
Of course this flight departed an hour late too. Passing over the Arabian Sea we flew right past Bombay and into Chennai. The next connecting flight to Bombay was around two hours later by the time us JFK people got our bags (absolutely last, of course).
Delay : 11 hours
And then the flight to Chennai, two hours later. We had to pass through customs and immigration at Chennai before heading to the domestic terminal. At which point we weren't allowed in because we didn't have tickets. The Jet Airways staff was of course, ill-prepared and as confused as a Beanie cap with opposite pole magnets in each rotor. After finally getting in by harassing some trying-to-be-courteous asshole staff guy we get onto this all-economy 737 and begin the one and a half hour flight to Bombay. Half an hour late, of course.
Delay : 13 hours
(License for this image : Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commerical Share-Alike)
Flying into Bombay was a treat actually. We flew right over the tip of Bombay (the docks, Gateway of India, all that) and then circled round into the airport.
Then finally, landed in Bombay, got the bags, hopped into a cab, bought a bottle of Bisleri en route, and headed home.
Arrived 14 hours after my scheduled arrival.
Now most of this was due to weather in Belgium, agreed. But Jet Airways had a big part to play in this mess as well. Picking an alternate airport which is completely unprepared to handle a diverted flight (in terms of equipment on the ground and basic things such as food) was just stupid. That was the main cause for much of the suffering. During the rest of it they managed alright though.
Anyways, good to be home.
Azhar Chougle | www.azharc.com
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