Jamie Fehr

Before you begin reading any of this truly harrowing adventure I would like to assure you that this story does indeed have a happy ending. I can say that because it’s my own story, it happened to me and I am currently living it’s happy ending.

While the stories setting is given away in the title it really begins much sooner than that at my first airport on the long and arduous but above all, cheap, journey from my hometown in Northern Alberta to my destination in Southern Spain.

I arrived at the airport rather promptly at a dreadfully early 4:30 am. After arriving at the check-in counter I was immediately informed by a rather flustered looking check-in counter clerk that one of my original four flights was cancelled. She claimed however that she had worked it out by finding a second flight from Chicago to Boston, that left only an hour later, leaving one hour for me and my bags to catch our connecting flight out to Dublin.

That was all well and good, an hour would be ample time I thought to myself and quickly made my way through customs, security and on to the aircraft for a very uneventful flight.

Upon landing in Chicago I was immediately filled with dread. It was dumping snow and the cloud ceiling was incredibly low. Conditions were far from ideal for flying. I’m never going to get out of here, I thought to myself. In the terminal I busied myself with sending emails and sorting photos and before long, it was time to board my next flight.

When I got on board the pilot came on the PA to assure everyone how fortunate we were as this was one of the few flights that was actually leaving. I breather a sigh of relief but was then quickly cautioned by another passenger that we hadn’t left the ground yet. He was right, moments later the pilot came back on to say that they had encountered a mechanical failure and that they were getting the maintenance team on it right away.

Any delay in the flight ate into precious minutes that I needed to make my next connection and before long 50 minutes was gone and we were yet to leave the ground. It seemed nearly hopeless. The maintenance team did a hard reset on all the planes electronics which solved the problem plane was de-iced and anti-iced. After which our flight took off a full hour (59 minutes, officially speaking) later than scheduled.

Yes, I was biting my nails. A few minutes would be enough time for me to get to my next flight but not nearly enough for my bags to do the same. That was a reality I was willing to accept.

At this point I think it hardly worth mentioning is that I didn’t make the connection in Boston. There wouldn’t be a story if I did. My hopes were officially dashed in the air when the pilot shared we would be landing a full half hour after my connecting flight had departed.

What next? I went to the Aer Lingus counter in the international terminal, as the were the carrier for my connecting flight. A helpful, young, Irish sounding lady greeted me there and informed me that it was not Aer Lingus’s responsibility to make arrangements for me, but rather United Airlines, as they were the ones who got me there late. She then offered to reschedule my flight for following day if if I wanted, just in case things didn’t work out with United. I said I would very much like that and found my way over to the United Terminal to see what they were going to do for me.

Apparently they could do nothing. The counter closed at 7:00 p.m. and it was then 7:15 p.m. and while I was able to find an ticketing employee there she told me to come back tomorrow. A 24-hour layover in Boston it was and I grudgingly accepted that reality.

In no way desiring to spend my next 24 hours in Boston Logan Airport I connected myself to the internet and found a cheap, out of the way hotel (Lord Wakefield Hotel) which ended up costing me more in taxi rides to and from than what the actual nights stay was. You live and you learn.

Waking up the following morning feeling well and refreshed (the hotel having provided me with complimentary toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant) and realizing that I had a full 10 hours until my next flight I decided to tour downtown Boston for the morning and part of the afternoon.

Details gratuitous to this story removed.

With a whole three hours to take off, I made my way quickly back to the Aer Lingus desk.

In short order I discovered that things weren’t as they seemed. As I was making my way to the desk I noticed that my flight was scheduled for an hour later than what the day previous’. Making a two hour layover in Dublin one. Thoughts of Deja vú were racing through my mind. Then again, how bad could an extra day in Dublin be?

When I finally did speak again with Denise at Aer Lingus she informed me that I was not scheduled for that flight due to the short layover and arrangements were made that I was to fly out on Lufthansa in less than two hours. I was already a little edgy from having been walking out in the cold and snow of downtown Boston for hours but when I was informed of what I needed to do in the proximate two hours, it was nearly too much: First, I needed to switch to Terminal C and confirm these arrangements with United, as they wanted my old paper tickets and were to print new information, then I needed to come back to the terminal I was in to retrieve my bags from Aer Lingus, then I was to to proceed to the Lufthansa check-in Counter on the other side of the terminal, and then I needed to clear security with it’s line stretching all the way back to where this race was about to start.

I took off running but was constantly being delayed by bad instructions and large, confused asian families. And after a blur of activity I found myself, a half hour to take off, having only just gotten to the check-in counter. All I had to keep me calm was the assurance of a really good natured Lufthansa employee who told me that although I was the very last person left to check-in for the flight that he was going to get me on the jet.

10 minutes went by. I was still waiting for a boarding pass.

10 more minutes went by and I was still waiting for a boarding pass. The lineup for security was still incredibly long.

So finally, with only a few minutes to spare I was handed a boarding pass with my seating situation upgraded to executive class. My friend from Lufthansa then ushered me right to the very front of the security line and to the very front of what was left of the boarding queue. Wow.

When I got on the airplane I was greeted by acres of leg room and my choice of water, orange juice, or champagne. I did most Christian/Missionary thing I could think and celebrated with a small glass of superb champagne and ever since take-off the flight attendants haven’t stopped feeding me.

It’s going to be hard to go back.

With my tale at it’s conclusion, being told in the most dramatic way I could muster I would like to state that the most probable moral of this story is to check-in really late. You might get bumped a class. Yet for some reason I don’t believe this to be true, I would think it more likely that your flight would get re-scheduled.

With a mere two and a half hours left until landing in which to get a nights rest, I would like to thank Denise from Aer Lingus and an A. Ramcharan from Lufthansa for all their help in keeping my sanity and would like to add that United is comprised of incompetent and lazy employees. Sorry if that’s you, my opinion is incredibly biased.

Update: Map of the Adventure.