Tagged as help/advice but honestly just a rant icl
My flight was scheduled for yesterday at 9:30 p.m.
Yesterday at 3 pm we are told it’s going to be delayed to 11:30. We dawdle around the town for a bit but still get to the airport around 6:00. Sitting at the gate and they tell us the plane is having maintenance issues or something. Delayed to 11:50. Delayed to 00:20. Delayed to 00:50.
It gets to 00:10 and they basically tell us ‘we are getting the crew and pilots here, their flight lands at 00:50, and they will come straight here.’ Delayed to 1:30.
The pilots arrive around 1:15 and people are genuinely clapping and cheering as they walk past. They get on the plane and the ground crew announce ‘we are just letting the ac on the plane kick in and then we will start boarding.’
10 minutes later? ‘Our first officer has timed out and the flight will take off at 10:30 am.’
At this point it is 1:30 in the morning and everyone’s like ‘okay if it takes off at 10 we can still get a couple hours of sleep.’ Everyone leaves to go get shuttles to hotels.
As we are literally standing outside waiting for the shuttle the flight is changed to 7:45 in the morning. We debate it and then decide to go to the hotel anyway.
Get to the hotel around 2:30 and go straight to sleep, up at 4:00 because I couldn’t sleep. During the night the flight has been changed AGAIN to 8:30. We get a 5:00 shuttle to the airport and spend some time getting food and etc with the meal vouchers we were given. Finally we board the flight, push back and taxi to the tarmac. EVERYONE on board is literally sleeping because we all got <2 hours of sleep.
And IT DOESNT END THERE.
There are incoming thunderstorms and the Canadian airspace is CLOSED for at least the next 30 minutes so we have now been sat on the tarmac for just over an hour. They don’t know when this flight is going to take off or even if the flight will ever take off.
I am actually near tears because I am so tired and I was going to get 18 hours in Vermont to visit my grandparents before going home to England and those hours are slowly dwindling to a close.
Keep in mind this flight is just over an hour. The drive is 10 hours. We would literally be there by now if we just drove instead. I’m scared I won’t get to visit my grandparents and I’m so tired and exhausted of this shit.
Rant over thanks for listening.
*UPDATE*
It gets worse then better haha
After we sat on the tarmac for 2.5 hours they told us ‘the Canadian airspace will open at 10:30’. 10:30 -> they announce ‘the airspace is open… BUT we’ve been sat on the tarmac too long and we don’t have enough fuel’
So we basically had to go back to the gate, deplane, sit around for 45 minutes, then get back onto the plane. We finally took off at around 12:10, and I got to my grandparents house at 3:15 pm.
Having caffeinated myself a bit more and settled down from the stress I’m just ready to put it behind me. But I will say it has been the worst flying experience of my life thus far. I genuinely thought for a solid chunk there that the flight was just not going to happen. Every time it felt like we might go, something happened. It just felt like the flight was never going to get into the air. Even when we landed in Burlington it didn’t feel real. As we took off I kept expecting them to say ‘sorry guys we actually have to ground the plane for XYZ reason’
Thank you guys all so much for your advice and support and I hope this is not an experience I will ever repeat.