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Travelling is not always fun!

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At Orlando airport my original flight via Detroit was delayed by three hours, due to "technical issues". So they rebooked me via Minneapolis. But that one was delayed too, due to "weather circumstances". But as that would affect all planes, the advice was to keep that route. And indeed the initial delay of 1,5 hours (I had a layover of 1,5 hours...), was reduced to 45 minutes when departing. But when the plane rolled back from the gate, the right engine didn't started. They had to replace the fuel filter. So it went back at the gate, they did the replacement and a half hour or so later we where again ready to depart. So rolled back again, but at that moment all electricity went down, because the third engine (used for electricity when the other engines aren't running) went down. Do they had to reboot the plane or something like that (did you know the in flight entertainment system runs on Linux?). So, again 30 minutes later we departed. At that time I had a scheduled layover in Minneapolis of -30 minutes. During the flight we could check the flight statuses, using the on board wifi, and the plane to Amsterdam was scheduled with a ... 30 minutes delay! Arriving in Minneapolis we had to wait for 10 minutes for a free gate. I got out of the plane as one of the first passengers, and ran all the way from gate G18 to G4 - which is a pretty nice exercise, even with the help of the moving sidewalk. Arrived at the gate on the exact (re)scheduled departure time. I got in the plane as last. They literally closed the door right behind me.
But then the plane had to be de-iced (hard to imagine when you're coming from Orlando!). But there seemed to be only one de-icing thing available at that time, 11:30PM, so we had to wait for nearly an hour...
Fell asleep very quick and stayed that way all across the Atlantic. Landed in Amsterdam just 2,5 hours later than my original schedule. So that was not too bad.
So now I am back in The Netherlands...but where is my bag???


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Train

Comments

Peter Raganitsch said…
Yeah, travelling is always an adventure :-)

Good to hear you made it through nonetheless.
7:31 pm
Andreas said…
I saw the penguin once when they needed to restart the entertainment system in my chair.
And yes - traveling is not always fun. Although I fly almost every week I am lucky not to switch plains and keep my small roll-on suitcase with me.
But remember, other means of transportation usually take longer. So even with a delay you are there long before if you would have been walking ;-)
3:07 pm
Andreas said…
plains = planes
3:07 pm
Roel said…
@Andreas : True, but if I had carried my roll-on suitcase as hand luggage, I never had made the Minneapolis connection... I made it running with one small backpack, two had been too much!
4:02 pm
Carolyn said…
You never know what might happen while travelling. I do a lot of travelling and try to be positive and keep enjoying the journey. The more bazzaar the incident, the better the story for later.
3:57 am
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