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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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The Block System

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In New York its easy to take the block system for granted. Since streets and avenues and numbers are all in logical order it's pretty hard to get lost here (in Manhattan).

Compared to Mumbai (Bombay, i.e.) which is a haphazard system of curvy roads and lines in a big mush where the names of streets hardly holds much value except for the postal service. After getting the chance to experience both, lets compare.

1. Noise

If you walk down a street in between avenues in the middle of Manhattan with no traffic on it, its completely silent. The block system is supreme when it comes to noise control between streets. The buildings on both sides act as a vertical funnel for the noise channeling it upwards so it doesn't spill into the next street and an ambulance siren will only reverberate in a street in the second it crosses the intersection at the avenue.

Unfortunately for the people living in the vertical funnel of noise, it only serves to amplify the sirens and ambient traffic. So everyone gets their fair share as the vehicle screams along.

In a non-block system (Mumbai specifically, of course), noise isolation between sections is poor. In this system, buildings aren't always facing each other, and due to the unsymmetrical (and fairly larger) plots of land, the buildings don't always take up the entire plot (leaving space for parking garages or a lawn, or as of late swimming pools and gyms). Hence there isn't much channeling of noise and depending on your situation the noise can simply travel up to your floor because it radiates all over - however, although one could possibly be on the receiving end of a larger quantity of noise due to the space involved, there's no funnel to direct and amplify it. So the overall received level of noise, is less, especially so if you aren't facing a road. Since Mumbai isn't completely flat (unlike Manhattan, which is for the most part), elevation varies, roads twist, and people can land lucky situations.

2. Transport

The block system wins in transport (both in reducing congestion and time for travel). A grid system distributes traffic extremely efficiently compared to a non-block system. Manhattan has two major arteries on the periphery of the island (FDR, Hudson Pkway), which makes it easy to skip over as many blocks are required then re-enter the system. Mumbai has similar, but these arteries are a part of the non-block system instead of being separate entities. That is, they are roads used to access housing, business etc. while Manhattan's arteries are dedicated highways.

Its easier to get around when the streets are numbered and the direction of traffic alternates. In a non-block system its just simply the opposite. Random roads become one-ways and its impossible to know the name of every street in Mumbai.

If one avenue gets clogged in a grid, the traffic can simply be diverted into adjoining streets to find alternate routes - since streets alternate in direction, the jam can dissipate easier. In a non-block system, if one main road gets clogged, it just spreads a traffic failure to connecting roads - because of the haphazard manner in which the traffic flows.

This is also complicated by signal issues. In a block system signals are timed extremely efficiently to ensure traffic flows in neat blocks (you can notice this anytime you look down an avenue in Manhattan). In a non-block system, due to major intersections composing of more than four roads (each in different directions sometimes) - signals have a hard time ensuring an efficient flow especially when the pattern reverses between the two rush hours.

3. Space & View

In a block system, there's a very good chance your view is simply someone else's window. Since every building occupies its entire space, unless you're higher than the building you're facing - your view is pretty much their view which is you (get it?). Having a-building-as-a-view-system also means getting cut off from the sun when you're in its shadow. An exception to this is (other than being higher up) is the corner view. The people in the corners of the buildings can usually see down the avenues/streets **

In a non-block system, there's a good chance your view encompasses more than just another building. Again, due to the erratic sizes of plots, spaces for garages, orientations of buildings, irregular width of roads, varying topography etc. etc. there's a good chance you're going to be able to see more. The non-block system also means that if you happen to be staring into another building, the gap is probably a bit larger. Since a non-block systems' edge artery roadways aren't highways a lot more people get a view of the sea.

** Another exception is anyone overlooking central park, which is the best living view on the planet, that very, very few can ever afford.

And that, is the block system.

Azhar Chougle | www.azharc.com

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JFK - BOM in 28 hours

The Block System