Friday, March 24, 2006

 

Unexpected trip to Iceland

 

Okay, so my trip back to Minnesota was not a smooth one. My flight from Aberdeen to Amsterdam was delayed by one hour. This delay made me miss my connecting flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis. I then had to trudge through the airport looking for the transfer desk to figure out what I was supposed to do next. Luckily, there was a flight just two hours later to MSP, so I got my new ticket and waited in the lounge. Eventually I boarded the plane and we took off. Everything was going pretty well for a few hours...nice meal, interesting little things playing on the movie screen...when suddenly I felt the plane start to bank steeply. The captain never came on the speaker so I assumed everything was alright. Well, just then the captain does come on to inform us that a fire alarm had sounded in the cargo area in the belly of the plane and that he had turned on the fire extinguisher system. It looked like everything was fine and he suspected a false alarm, but FAA regulations said that we had to make an emergency stop at the nearest airport. This turned out to be in Reykjavik, Iceland! As we had already passed the island, we had to do a u-turn and land there! We had to land far away from the airport and were met by the fire brigade. They checked everything out while we all sat on the plane (nice to know that in the event of a REAL fire, we all would have burned alive just sitting on the plane waiting to hear something!). Soon, they hooked up a tow truck and towed us to a gate. They had to open up the airport for us (they close the airport every night), but at least we were allowed to get off the plane and stretch our legs. About 1 1/2 hours later we got back on the plane and were told that we could safely take off again. The downside, however, was that because they had deployed the fire extinguishers, a part had broken off in the cargo area and regulations said that they couldn't have any cargo down there in that situation. So, we were forced to leave all of our luggage in Iceland, and they didn't know exactly when we would be getting it back again because there's only about 1 flight that goes to Minneapolis every few days or so, and they would have to separate our luggage and just put it on any flight that had enough room! So, needless to say, we were all quite pissed! Me especially, because I originally wasn't even supposed to be on that flight! Anyhoo, the rest of the trip was fine and I got into the Minneapolis-St. Paul Int'l Airport around 10:15pm (my original itinerary had me getting in by 4:25pm!). So we all had to go through customs and then find the baggage claim desk to fill out a bunch of paperwork (300+ people waiting in line to fill out a baggage claim form was so fun, I can tell you!). They eventually delivered my luggage via a courier service on Wednesday, March 29th! I had to go shopping on Saturday just so that I could change out of my travel clothes, which were, for lack of a better word: yuck (24+ hours wearing them).

 

The thing that I was worried most about during the whole situation was getting a message to my mother (because of the delay and change of flights, she wouldn't know that I wasn't on my original flight). I text messaged her from Amsterdam, but with different country codes and whatnot, I wasn't sure that she got the message. Then, I had just enough money on my phone (I have a pay-as-you-go phone in Scotland) to try another text after the fiasco in Iceland. I still didn't know if she had gotten any of them, and I couldn't try again because I ran out of money.

 

Luckily, it turned out that she did in fact get both, so she wasn't sitting around the airport for 6 hours wondering where I was. She later yelled at me for the succinct way that I phrased my last text: “fire detected on plane…now in Iceland…will call u from msp airport when I arrive…nw flight 0055.” I agree that the brevity and wording would have scared anybody, but hey, I had limited space and money on the phone!

 

I did get a voucher from Northwest for $200 towards another flight (or 25,000 frequent flier miles) and a $25 voucher from the baggage claim desk (plus another 1000 frequent flier miles). So at least there was some compensation for my troubles. Those miles coupled with the 8000 miles from my regular journey means that I'll be able to fly home during Christmas break to be with my mom (her birthday is on Christmas) for free! I just hope my trip back to Scotland in two weeks will be less adventurous!

 

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