Malta 2007: Day Seven - The Long Flight Home

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Malta - Day Five

The Long Flight Home

The gate agent told us that we needed to go over to the Continental counter to book new travel arrangements. That was it. We had lost. Our reservations had just been sent into the great beyond and we were now at the mercy of fate and our fellow travelers' equal inability to get to the airport on time.

The woman at the rebooking desk asked us why we missed our flight and we explained as quickly as we could. She was then kind enough to inform us that Continental was not responsible for our missing our flight, so if we got stuck in London, we would be raiding our own nickel collection for a hotel room. And we would be flying standby, so our ability to get on the flight was contingent upon others' not getting on the flight. And the next flight was the last flight to Newark that day, so it was our only chance to get home until the following day. And it was a school holiday week, so a lot of families were traveling, making it that much less likely we would get seats. My stomach would have sunk at each new piece of news, but it hit bottom a long time ago.

After rebooking, we returned to the ticket desk to check in. From here on, we were flying luck and grace of God. Without those, we were going to be stuck somewhere along the way.

Nobody Makes Us Feel Better

We were not reassured by the ticket agent, who had clearly never had to deal with this situation before. The entire method for coping with luggage and people that may or may not be going to a destination seemed to leave her at a loss. While this had no bearing on our ability to make the flight, it did not make us feel better about the prospects of ourselves and our luggage ending up in the same location at the end of the day -- wherever that may be. She finally received some assistance from her manager, but the stress had been piled on by then. But this new delay had no impact on us whatsoever, as the flight had already been missed.

From there, there was nothing more that we could do. We headed to security to get to our gate and wait. It was a rough day already, and we were dealing with, apparently, razor-thin odds of its improvement. But we were having a much better day than the person who had a seizure in the security line.

Security went like security does. From there it was possibly the longest walk I've ever had in an airport. That gate is one ridiculous long way away. I assure you, when taking that walk, you can understand why they are so strict about the time limits. After taking that long journey through long passages and twisting corridors and across enough real estate to produce at least six poems by Wordsworth -- had it been a country lane and not an airport -- we arrived at our gate. And, after the delay at the rebooking counter, the delay at the ticket desk, the delay in security, and the eternal walk to the gate, we got there just in time to see our plane sit at the gate for the next 20 minutes. Bastards.

Waiting Again

At this point, there was nothing more we could do. We could only wait until the gate agents showed up so that we could check in and let them know that we were there and ready to get on a flight.

As chance had it, we happened to chat with a woman who had also missed the early flight to Newark and was flying standby on the new flight. She was an American living in London who had come over for a job and stayed to start her own business when she got laid off. I wish I could remember her name, but she mentioned that she was looking to write a book. I probably should have discussed her plans for the book, as I have experience in that regard -- though none with actually getting a book published. Thus, I really don't have any book writing experience, as books tend to be made of paper, bindings and covers rather than pipe dreams. So perhaps it's a good thing for her that I did not investigate further.

It was good for all of us, though. We had other people to talk to and commiserate with and a shared problem is a little easier burden to bear. It helped to occupy the two hours we had between the two Newark flights and it gave us all a chance to think about something other than the fact that we were all about one step away from screwed.

Any distraction from mulling our situation was welcome. There were no coffee shops to give us something to drink. There was no newsstand to give us something to read. There was an Internet station, but plopping a one-pound coin into the slot only gave us access to a screen informing us that the terminal did not have a network connection. It seems as though nothing in that country worked right and they always charged us for the right to find that out.

The Anxious, Powerless Wait

The one-hour cutoff for the flight approached. When that mark passed, we were officially into the time when we could begin hoping for boarding passes. We had decided that neither of us was going anywhere without the other. I was willing to let Chris go ahead just so she could get home, but she was having none of it -- we made it through Gozo together, we would make it through this together. So Chris and I, and a lot of other people, hovered by the gate in anticipation of hearing our name called. Unlike our first trip through London, we were hoping we would be paged at the airport.

It was a long wait. More and more people had their name called and walked up to the check-in desk to get their boarding passes. We knew that the longer we waited, the less likely it was that we would receive a boarding pass. So we stood there and we waited and we sweated. There was nothing more that we could do but hope for boarding passes and wonder how we get to the airport hotel. Then, finally, the sweet relief of hearing our names called meant that we would at least complete the first and longest part of our journey.

Unfortunately, we would not be sitting together. I was in the middle of the plane, Chris was near the back. So, when it was time to board, we bade our farewells and took our seats.

Holding It Together Over the Atlantic

It was a fairly pleasant flight, all told. I chatted with a woman who had joined her husband on a business trip to Scotland and she offered me some crossword puzzles to pass the time. Chris and I got to spend a little bit of time together when she gave up her seat for a bit, and I spent a little time with Chris on a visit to the back of the plane. It was far from ideal, but we made it through well enough. At least until we approached Newark.

Newark Airport is one of the more detested destinations amongst air travelers. Poorly designed in the extreme, its most noteworthy feature is the marked inconvenience of the security checkpoints. They are positioned in such a way that it seems as though the designers of the airport had not anticipated a need for them. Anytime you change terminals or, sometimes, concourses in the same terminal, you need to go through security. This makes changing planes in Newark Airport a pronounced inconvenience. Plus, any change in terminals requires the use of the tram system that is not exactly the fastest show on earth.

We did not have a whole lot of time to change planes in Newark. This was not helped by the fact that the winds seemed to be pretty strong over the Atlantic that day, so we were getting in late, as well. And we were flying standby, so who knows what hoops we had to jump through there. So it was not without much concern on my part that I noticed we were turning around.

Newark Makes It Worse

I'm a fairly experience traveler and I know when a plane is making a big circle. And the screen showing the map of the earth also agreed with my assessment. This was adding at least a half-hour to our travel time, and now we were in a time crunch that could leave us off of another flight. The last flight from Newark to Cleveland, as a matter of fact. The stress was piling up severely.

We filled out our immigration cards on the plane, so that was the one thing that went according to plan. However, we landed with 40 minutes in which to go through passport control, get our bags, go through customs, go through security, check in at the desk and hope we got onto the flight. On top of that, the walk just to get to passport control was very long and we didn't even know how much of a line there would be. I've had some long waits in those lines, so I was not in the mood to bet on our ability to clear that with a breeze.

Fortunately, we did. Unfortunately, we then had to wait for our bags. And we waited. And we waited. And we watched everybody else on the flight get their bags and we were still waiting. Then my bag finally showed up, but Chris's was nowhere to be seen. Even the woman in charge of making sure the bags were coming out of the luggage chute correctly had left the scene and we had not seen Chris's bag. That meant that we would need to fill out a lost luggage form. Which meant that we were going to miss our flight. And then a miracle happened.

Chris's bag appeared out of a mysterious nowhere on an otherwise empty luggage carousel. I don't know how long it had been there or where it came from, but it was as though we were getting a sign from above. Or maybe we were just getting our chain yanked again.

By the way, I do have to mention that the couple I was sitting next to offered to let us stay at their house that night if we got stuck in Newark. It was a reassuring slice of human kindness, though I think Chris and I preferred to stay as close to the airport as possible, should we not make it home that night.

The Last Act

We went through customs with nary a worry and we dropped our bags off at the luggage return without a problem. Fortunately, our flight was in the same terminal as the one where we arrived. Unfortunately, we needed to go through security.

It was a long, painful wait in that line. The clock just kept ticking down the minutes and the line was inching along. There was no rest for the strain in this airport either, but at least our cell phones were back on their native soil and working again.

We made it through security with a little over 15 minutes left before the flight left. We rushed through the usual insane crowds of Newark Airport and arrived at the desk. They had not started boarding yet, nor had they called out any standby passengers. However, the woman behind the desk was not optimistic, as it was a very full flight.

From there it was easy. First name called: mine. I went up to the desk, said I didn't want to fly without my wife and 30 seconds later, I had a second boarding pass. The seats weren't together, but I and my wife of one week were too relieved to care. At long last, we were on our way home.

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