No Time to be On Time.

It seems we’ve come to a point again where I’ve not updated in a while. I’ve said some few times before that there may be considerable periods where I don’t update because there’s nothing worth updating for or that I’d be busy; that’s fine though as I’d much rather spend time on work and more productive things than a chronicle such as this. So let’s get right to it, then.

This last December I actually found myself on a casual jaunt to London with relatives. My notice was something akin to ‘Oh by the way I’m buying airline tickets to London; which seat do you want?’ my only possible reply to being so suddenly informed was ‘It doesn’t matter’ and a shrug as I went back to work. In truth it really doesn’t matter due to there being no room in any standard seat on an airliner, regardless of where it is.

The plane to London was to leave at 6:00 PM and the airport itself is the better part of three hours away from where I am, so in the thought of arriving early we began the drive to the airport at 12:00 noon. We arrived (after some creative navigation) sometime about 3:40 PM; spent around another thirty minutes going through the service desk, security, and getting to the actual departure gate which happened to be the absolute farthest gate possible from the airport entrance. Given that we were early, there were plenty of seats to be had and so we sat by the closest seats to our gate. These particular seats were in the corner of the room between our gate and another which was unattended and, unknown to me at the time, its staff radio was still on. By this time it was roughly 4:20 PM so there would not be very long of a wait for the plane. I took this as a relief since there were at least two other flights leaving from different gates (one being the other gate in the corner where we sat) in the same area as ours and it would soon be crowded.

This gave me enough time to get something to eat, to say nothing of the fact that airline food is none too appealing nor filling. Perfect, or so I thought. Around 5:30 PM or so we hear an announcement that claims our plane is being cleaned and prepared for the flight to London. As 6:00 PM came closer it was easy to notice that there was not a plane to be seen anywhere near. As I sat there waiting I could occasionally hear messages over the unattended staff radio; none of which had yet caught my interest. 6:00 PM came and went with no announcement or indication as to the state of the flight, save for that soon the departures board changed to suggest we would leave instead at 6:30 PM. Almost immediately afterwards the radio came to life again and I hear a call for maintenance on 174; my flight. It was then easy to surmise, by the lackluster state of things, that it was unlikely we would depart at 6:30 PM either.

Soon the board claimed 6:45 and again there was another call for maintenance on 174. No one seemed to notice or even be able to hear the radio except for those of us sitting in the four seats near it; which included the Jamaican woman who had just joined us. Once they heard this second call they all began to talk about it and my father made sarcastic remarks about the delays. I simply decided to play with my Nintendo DS during the wait. As 6:45 came the board changed to 7:00 shortly followed by 7:12 which was itself followed by 7:20. All the while I could hear random calls about maintenance for 174 on the nearby staff radio. When it actually came to be around 7:20 there was an actual announcement made that our plane simply hadn’t arrived yet.

This is when I began to ponder the situation. Was it that the plane had been there for all those hours and had encountered problems while being cleaned thus meaning their claims it hadn’t yet arrived were a lie? Or was it instead that the plane hadn’t actually arrived and the previous statement about it being prepared was the lie? If so then why the sporadic radio calls about maintenance, would the plane then be having an issue which caused it to have not arrived yet? Nothing was clear and I wasn’t about to go ask because I knew I’d most likely not get a straightforward or possibly even truthful answer.

Around this time the gate area was greatly crowded to the point where it was soon to be standing room only. Passengers for two other flights, as well as ours, filled the small area with many of them opting to sit on the ground or their luggage rather than stand. There were some children playing within the crowd and soon a woman trying to get a seat on a flight at the gate desk after being sent there by her original airline with no tickets or documentation at all. Soon, again, the departure board for our flight changed and this time claimed 7:50.

A few minutes later there was another announcement about our flight. The announcer again claimed the plane had not arrived yet and then proceeded to say “Flight 174 to London-Heathrow will be departing at eight-ooo…” the announcer dragged out the ‘o’ demonstrating that any time they gave would definitely not be our departure time as even they didn’t seem to know and after several seconds of dragging the ‘o’ out finished by finally saying “…ooo-five.” My immediate comment was “That’s a lot of o’s” as the board changed to reflect this new ‘departure’ time.

It was then that we found out the Jamaican woman sitting next to us had been waiting for the same flight since 9:00 AM. I can’t imagine spending that many hours at an airport doing absolutely nothing. Even with a portable game system such as my DS it would still be fairly mind numbing and deathly boring to me. I thought that since they made an announcement vocally claiming the departure time to be 8:05 PM then at least in knowing this was false information the plane would likely leave sometime during the hour of eight. This was not the case, either.

The board still continued its various time changes for our plane as the other flights came and left. It was dark outside now and thus difficult or impossible to see any planes that happened to be landing and no way to actually know the status of our plane until it had physically come to the gate. Eventually it was announced that the plane had arrived and it shortly came to the gate and unloaded its passengers sometime around 8:20. The flight staff also changed out after everyone had gotten off and our latest fantasy with departure times was 8:50.

Finally around 9:05 they called for first class to board, and just a short few minutes later they call for the other passengers to board even though the first line had not at all cleared. The line for waiting passengers sort of deformed and eventually split into two as they subtly rushed to get people on the now, very late, plane. To the best of my knowledge the plane finally began to take off around 9:30 EST for a flight that’s over seven hours long; the airline food was much more appealing now.

Overall the trip was fine and the return flight was rather uneventful. My favourite part was the day I went to RAFM London which I’ll cover in another update along with some other things.