{"id":6396,"date":"2015-06-15T11:37:55","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T18:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.wavewithoutashore.cwgservices.org\/?p=6396"},"modified":"2015-06-15T11:37:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T18:37:55","slug":"the-layover-from-hell-not-mine-thank-goodness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/the-layover-from-hell-not-mine-thank-goodness\/","title":{"rendered":"The layover from hell…not mine, thank goodness."},"content":{"rendered":"

United puts passengers in military barracks in Goose Bay<\/a><\/p>\n

Once upon a con, I waited for nearly 6 hours in Toronto while Canada’s Eastern attempted to roll up one working plane to send to Halifax. Little did I know that legendarily the union feud within Eastern was so bad that at one point pilot and co-pilot were not speaking to each other, but frostily involving ground control as an intermediary…<\/p>\n

Well, I had booked on this airline, in the winter, and thus far 3 planes had failed…they’d roll em up, and send ’em back to the hangar. Finally to get our way belated flight off, they borrowed a plane from Canadian Air, and off we went.<\/p>\n

Engine next to me sounded wonky. Lot of vibration. Our delay meant we weren’t going to make a storm-free entry into Halifax NS. <\/p>\n

In fact, we reached Halifax and aborted 3 landings with bushel-sized chunks of snow breaking off our wings and flying back through the lights. I’m beginning to think, “People who’ve seen this sort of thing probably didn’t survive.”<\/p>\n

We came around again. Terrible turbulence. Stew grabs a bullhorn and yells, “We’re going down…” And turbulence hit, throwing her up, and then down. Magazines from the seat pockets flew up and all over. Stew valiantly crawls up over a seatback with bullhorn in hand and finishes… “…in Monckton, New Brunswick.” General applause.<\/p>\n

Our left engine still sounds sick. We’re tossing all over the sky. The dear lady next to me starts chattering about which doilys and silver and china she’s leaving to which kid…<\/p>\n

We finally get there, park in the snow at the end of a long line of stranded airliners, and have no transport. We hike toward the distant lights of the terminal in the dark—I’m wearing strappy high-heeled sandals. Frozen. Absolutely. But that one light, like a distant star, guides us on.<\/p>\n

We collapse, shivering, except one man does a total meltdown at the desk howling that his wife is waiting for him at Halifax. Uh, guy, we’re alive. Shut up. <\/p>\n

Other people are being told they’re stuck here for a while. I brightly realize–I’m an INTERNATIONAL passenger, which gives me priority, and manage to claim a vacant seat on a morning flight.<\/p>\n

We have no luggage. It finally arrives. We have to pull it loose from the iced-over cart, and it’s frozen shut. We do get a bus to a hotel. That’s the good news. The bad news? We no sooner get checked in than we all get calls saying the bus will be back in an hour and a half, which will be dawn, and they’ve put those of us with seats on the first flight out.<\/p>\n

Didn’t even undress. Just ran warm water on my feet, flopped on the bedspread, and tried not to sleep through the wakeup call.<\/p>\n

We got airborne, on an ice-cold plane with one side of the tires sorta frozen and thumpy, and the pilot saying to us all, “Belt in and hang on. We’re first out and we don’t know what we’re going to run into…”<\/p>\n

We did get to Halifax, but that’s another story. <\/p>\n

We were, at one point during the bouncing around, told that if we couldn’t land at Monckton, we’d have another chance at Goose Bay.<\/p>\n

Reading the above, I can only say—I am very glad not to have been in a barracks in Goose Bay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United puts passengers in military barracks in Goose Bay Once upon a con, I waited for nearly 6 hours in Toronto while Canada’s Eastern attempted to roll up one working plane to send to Halifax. Little did I know that legendarily the union feud within Eastern was so bad that at one point pilot and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6397,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6396\/revisions\/6397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}