Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Not Such a "Good Friday"

Joe was sheduled to arrive home friday afternoon after a 2 week trip to Kazakhstan. Thursaday night we found out that wasn't happening.

He left Atyrau, Kazakhstan early Friday morning for a flight to Houston with a connection in Moscow. He noticed they were circling Moscow, the pilot came on and said something in Russian. The only word Joe understood was "Sheremetyevo", the name of the WRONG airport.

He asked the flight attendant and she said they were being diverted because of fog.....THE SKY WAS CLEAR.
They landed, come on the intercom and asked by vote if they wanted to stay on the plane (for several hours) or get off. It was a unanimous get off! There were only 23 passengers making connecting flights. Joe was going the farthest.

The 23 were segerated.......forever. No monitors, very little info, wrong airport, lots of frustation. At one point I texted Joe and asked when his plane for Houston was leaving; his reply.....20 minutes ago. There is one flight a day from Moscow to Houston on Singapore Air.

Finally he flew to the correct airport 100km away and started the process of trying to get home and hoping there would be a seat on any airline. There were several scenarios, but the best was for him to wait and take the same flight Saturday morning.

I'm thinking fun, 1 day and night in Moscow. Then he reminded me, you have to have a visa processed in advance.

He spent the next 18 hours in the airport lounge with these two chairs together trying to sleep.

  

He finally made it home Saturday afternoon after 45 hours of travel......and had a very Happy Easter!

1 comment:

Andrea said...

OH NO!!!! As funny and well written as you have presented this story, I still wanna hear Joe's version...I'm sure I'll be laughing just as hard!