The Aerie
So I'm NOT in England. Not that I would have been yet, but neither would I have been blogging.
The trouble started before I left: the phone rang. It was Orbitz. An automated voice informed me that my flight was 52 minutes delayed. This was helpful since my spouse now had time to leave piano lessons, pick me up, and give me a ride to the airport.
Unfortunately, I was also aware that I only had a 90-minute layover.
Entering the airport went smoothly and I reached the gate with ninety minutes to spare. Grabbed a burger, since there wasn't going to be any food on this flight, and took my time getting back to the gate. By the time I got there the attendants had arrived and were fielding questions.
"I have to change planes for London in Detroit, and this is cutting it pretty close."
"London? You're with him," said the clerk, pointing at a bloke at the counter beside me.
The clerk said they'd try to message ahead and inform the flight that we were running late, and they also moved our seats up to the front so that we could disembark earlier.
We boarded around the stated time... and then we sat there. And sat there. Eventually an attendant came on. "We're waiting for flight crew on a delayed flight from Alaska." Greeeeat.
We sat longer. My whole fly-across-the-pond novel trickled away before my eyes, and the plaine was still at the gate. Flight crew arrived with much thumping and bumping.
And we waited.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the pilot informed us, "We are waiting for additional flight attendants. Unfortunately the delay has caused some of our attendants to exceed the legal 14 hour limit, and we need fresh attendants."
And we waited.
Attendants arrived, breathless and flustered, paged to the airport from various places around the city. Finally, two hours - that is to say 120 minutes - after we were supposed to depart, we pulled away from the gate. Still we held out hope: we ought to be arriving with 20 minutes to go, with 15, with 10.
Finally we were on the ground, and my inadvertent colleague peered out the plane windows to see the British Air jet parked at the terminal. Excitedly we watched it draw closer, and lo and behold we parked at the very NEXT gate! We could make it!
Incredibly, not only did we park at the adjacent gate, but when the gate was extended it did not join the front of the plane where we had boarded, but the door in the middle of the plane, right where we were seated. So we leapt from the plane the moment the door was opened and ran pell-mell to the adjacent gate.
The door was closed.