Our trip home and why I still hate flying

Last week I told you about our fun experiences on the plane to Ireland (well, to JFK which then took us to Ireland), and this week I shall regale you with takes of our trip home. As was the case with the trip there, the international flight, minus the annoying customs questions, was pretty uneventful. I was actually hopeful, as we landed at JFK, that my flight home wouldn’t be that bad. It’s a shame I was wrong, though…

I feel bad because I’m pretty much going to be bashing JFK airport here, but my experience was so bad it is really hard not to. Suffice it to say, this airport is now my least favorite airport. It used to be O’Hare, but nope, JFK takes first place. (Go JFK!)  However, to be nice, I will leave out the names of the airline in question to protect the identities of the damned.

How bad was it? Well, let me tell you…

First, I should tell you how hot the airport was. They have a ton of windows, and apparently they didn’t feel like turning the AC on despite the fact that it was 90 degrees out. And did I mention we had a four hour layover in this place? Oh I didn’t? Yeah, we did. But we had to go through customs first. I thought it would actually be this complicated deal, but no, it turns out we go through this tunnel of a hallway and stand in line forever only to get our luggage from a baggage claim, carry it to customs and then hand it to this lady who is just throwing them on a cart. Necessary? Probably not. (Side note: JFK broke the leg on my suitcase, and no, that’s not an allowable claim. Apparently it’s collateral damage) Then T gets yelled at by this security lady because he didn’t put his passport open to the page with his picture in it. Seriously yelled at. It was funny to me, but come on, open the damn thing up. It’s not rocket science, people. And calm down. Your job isn’t that stressful.

Ok, so our gate was 25P, which we thought was weird because there was just Gate 25 and Gate 26. So where in the hell is 25P? So I ask someone, and he says that it’s on Gate 25. So we go to Gate 25. Oh wait, every single domestic flight is flying out of Gate 25. And they have as many gates there as are in the alphabet. And there aren’t enough seats for everyone. And the gate is directly facing the sun. Oh good.

So we sit there and wait. Our flight is supposed to board at 6:50. Well it hits 7:00 and nothing. The flight doesn’t show up on the screen. 7:05, 7:10, 7:15…finally they come on the speakers to tell us that they plane just landed and is running late. Ok, that’s fine. So finally it’s our chance to board. We line up and head down these stairs into the dungeon. It’s this huge fake hallway leading to a multitude of gates. They have some lady shouting out flights and pointing us towards the right gate. Cleveland go right, Indy go left…what if I missed that? Confusing, people, confusing.

We have to climb the stairs to get to our teeny tiny plane, and we wait in line to get to our seats. I should mention we are sitting in the second row so “waiting” shouldn’t be waiting. We get to our seats and T tries to put his bag in our overhead compartment. It’s big so he has a hard time but gets in there so I decide to put mine under my seat. I sit and go “wait, I wanted to put my jacket in the overhead.” Before I can get up, this old lady across the aisle from me jumps up and shuts the compartment closed before I can do that. I look to T and go “did she just do that? Seriously?” Not deterred, I get up, look at her, open the compartment, look at her again, put my coat in there and close it. Screw you lady. I should mention she and her husband were sitting there in surgical masks, too. I hate rude people.

The pilot comes on and says hi and announces our final destination, except he can’t get that right. He first says Pittsburgh, goes off the radio, and then he comes on and says Indianapolis. I have great confidence when the pilot doesn’t know where we’re going. It gives me that warm fuzzy feeling.

They close the plane door and we wait. And wait. And wait. Our pilot comes on and says apparently we are waiting for our push crew to push the plane out. So we wait. And wait some more. And then the pilot comes on and says that there’s a truck that has broken down behind our plane so we are waiting for a tow truck or for them to fix it. So we wait for that. And wait. And then the pilot comes on and says that the tow truck is on route. Wait, it hasn’t gotten there? What, did they call AAA? About thirty minutes later the tow truck takes the truck away. The question I had was, if the push crew can push a plane out of the gate, can they not push a truck out of the way? I mean, one of these things weighs less than the other…

We start taxing out of the gate, the lights go off and I try to pretend that we’re not in the smallest plane known to man. We drive and drive passing by jet after jet waiting to take off. T says to me “are all of these planes waiting to take off?” I close my eyes and lean on T, praying the rosary in my head to calm myself. Think of nice, big spaces, Nain, nice big spaces. Surely, not. About 20 minutes later the pilot comes on and tells us that we are 22 in line to take off. I thought I heard that incorrectly, but no, 22. We were 22 in line. He says that we might have to go back to the gate if we don’t take off soon because apparently we need to turn the air conditioning off to conserve fuel because we might not have enough fuel to get home. It was at this point I decided to take Nain’s sleeping pills.

I was pretty sure I was going this was it.  This was how I was going to go. I was going to die on this plane. Either because our pilot forgot how to fly the plane, it would blow up on the runway, or we would die in a crash because we didn’t have enough fuel to fly. Thank God for sleeping pills because I don’t think I would have made it through without them. We did make it home alive, so this story ends well.

But I stand firm in my stance that I hate flying.

Stay tuned for Friday… I have twisted T’s arm into doing a guest post for me on the wedding and honeymoon, so, while you have gotten it all from my perspective, you will hear it from T himself on Friday. So you definitely have to come back for that!