It's taken me a long time to write this because I am still angry at the familia. I am still looking for a deep well where they can live. The thought of flying up to Seattle at Thanksgiving at Sister Stephanie's house, just makes me froth with rage. RAGE! So, that trip won't be happening.
But the flights to and from Mallorca were full of peril. Most of it do to me and my scheduling prowess.
To recap, my father was the President of the United States Council for Serra International or USAC. USAC and SI's job is to get people into the priesthood and help the priests that are already there. ( I could write a really long post about the in-fighting that exists in this Christian organization between USAC and SI but that is a post for another time) My father's sole purpose for being president this yeas was so he could get the organizing committee to hold their annual convention in Palma, Mallorca on the 300th anniversary of Father Junipero Serra's birth. This plan seems like a no-brainer. SI originally was going to hold it in Barcelona, a city that was not the birthplace of Serra and did not have Cathedrals and churches were the man actually worked. This points to the magnificent leadership of SI.
But my father beat their brows and got his way. His other plan was to get the family all together from their scattered locals for a family vacation on the Island of Mallorca. He designated me travel agent for planning all the itineraries.
For my parents it was easy. They couldn't make a twenty hour plane trip in one go. They decided to spend a couple days in Boston coming and going. Not a chance of missing a connection there. Sister Stephanie, my nieces and nephews were going to be flying out of Seattle. I found them a one stopper through Amsterdam. The only problem was the ten hour layover on the way back. Screw them, I wasn't on the flight. Plus, they had to get back at a certain time and this was a flight that would do that. (Later I would get all sorts of complaints that their trip was too short because of those flights. Well, don't tell me you have to leave by this date and return by this date, then and your trip will be much longer)
Which left me. In researching the flights, I realized that Aer Lingus had a direct flight from Dublin to Mallorca every other day. Lots of airlines took you to Europe and then after a massive layover in Frankfurt or Madrid or Amsterdam, you then flew to Mallorca. But Aer Lingus had the smallest sit around the airport window. Excellent. Granted, the window for catching the flight in New York was only ninety minutes, but those flights from LAX to JFK ran like clockwork.
The one thingy niggling my brain was the fact that I was going to fly through Dublin without actually spending any time in Ireland. In case you don't know, Ireland is probably my top destination of choice. There are still plenty of nooks and crannies in that country I can explore or revisit. So, the thought of visiting but not staying was a thin sliver of metal into my heart. And the gods must have been listening and laughing and caused the subsequent events to occur.
My Virgin American plane sat on the ground at LAX for a long time. All the dominoes were in place for a complete fall and this one was the first to tip. I had my watch on and I spent a lot of time doing the flight math. If we took off right now, I would still have seventy minutes to get my bags and get to Aer Lingus. If we took off right now, I would have sixty minutes. When the wheels went up, I had a fifty minute window. Still doable. All I needed was my bag to come off first on the conveyor belt.
For those of you wondering, when you fly International and you change planes, you need to take your bags off the one plane and recheck them on the new plane so they can be scanned by Homeland security. It used to be you could check your bags all the way through to your final destination. I was hoping that on this flight, they would use the old way.
As I'm flying across the country, I chanced to look at my ticket. I was habitually checking the time of departure to make sure I was going to make it. On one glance, I noticed the following phrase "Boarding closes 45 minutes prior to departure" What? What does that mean? That can't be right. I did the math. I had five minutes to get my bags from Terminal 4 over to Terminal 5 to make my window. But that couldn't be right. Surely, that was just a scare tactic to get people to the plane early. It was a scare tactic that worked.
I paced around the baggage carousel at JFK willing my bag to come down fast. It didn’t. My eyes were burning a hole in my watch face. When the oversize blue duffel finally slid down the ramp, I only had to knock a few people out of the way in the dwindling crowd waiting for bags.
I sprinted to terminal four. Thank god for wheels on bags.
Terminal four had this really long jetway that went from the skytrain to the actual ticket gates. I’m sure they built it lengthy for just such an occurrence as mine. Oddly enough, as I was running, I could here a fellow passenger running right behind me the whole way. We both pulled up to the Aer Lingus counter at the same time. I had thirty minutes until the plane took off. Yeeha, I had made it.
Not so fast. It seems the wording on the tickets were factual. Ticketing for the flight to Dublin with connections to Mallorca had closed. But I had thirty minutes! I had my boarding pass preprinted. I had already pre-boarded. Just let me go through.
Nope. Not a chance. You will stay here Mr. Lynch. And we don’t know if we will even put you on the next flight. Yeah, there was a heated exchange. There was a lot of shuffling around of the disgruntled passenger who had badly timed his flight.
When I was standing at another counter to get my name on the stand-by list for the next flight, my original ticket agent came by to vent with her compatriot. I don’t think she saw me standing there when she mentioned heatedly about not understanding how people couldn’t book enough time between their flights. I resumed my anger with her.
They eventually sent the manager to talk to me and calm me down. He was less than useless with his options. “
We could fly you to Barcelona and then you would have to buy a ticket from their to Mallorca”.
“When does that plane leave and how much will it cost?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m not a travel agent. But we will do everything in our power to help you out”
“Can you guarantee me on the next flight to Dublin”?
“ I can’t, sir. But we do want to help you”
Here’s the deal. I knew I had missed the Sunday flight from Dublin to Mallorca. I knew they flew every other day from there having done a lot of research on the project. Actually, I was supposed to meet the parents in Dublin and fly with them to Mallorca on that flight. I was curious what they would be thinking when I didn’t meet them at the gate.
All of my options seemed bad. I could hope to get a flight in some foreign airport and pay for an additional flight to Mallorca or I could just wait for the next flight from Dublin. I opted for Dublin.
I decided I would hang out in Dublin and get on the next direct flight to Mallorca. Although, I wasn’t even guaranteed to be on the next flight to Dublin. I was fourth on the standby list.
I spent the three hours until the next flight to Dublin stealing the free wifi from the JetBlue desk. I wandered around the terminal dragging my duffel bag behind me. Since I didn’t have a seat on the flight, they couldn’t check my bag. The one fact I learned is that TWA’s futuristic ( futuristic for the sixties) looking terminal still sits in the middle of all the terminals.
Up to this point, I’m going to put equal blame on myself for poor time management and the airlines for not being able to follow to schedule. But after this the blame needle swings more toward my good friends at Aer Lingus.
I was the last person from the standby list to get on the plane. I asked my manager friend about tickets to get from Dublin to Mallorca. They didn’t want to cut them until I was actually on the plane to Dublin. They scrambled away at their terminals, typing furiously and then staring at the screens without comprehension of what they were seeing. My friend the manager told me just to go to the gate and board and the tickets would be waiting at the gate for me for my flight to Mallorca.
Here’s the thing, my flight to Dublin was still boarding after the time that it was meant to depart. Which meant earlier when I was yelling at the ticket agent to let me through the gate, they were probably just starting to board the plane. It was fiction that everybody needed to be on the plane a half-hour early to meet FAA requirements.
So, I’m at the gate asking for my tickets for the next leg of my flight to some more confused looking gate agents. They don’t know what I am talking about. They use their walkie-talkies to talk, I assume, to my friend the manager. The gate agent tells me just to get on the plane and that my tickets will be ready for me when I depart on Tuesday. I feel very confident this will happen. Or not so much.
I kick around in Dublin for two days. I stayed at the Bewley’s hotel near the airport which has gone downhill since I stayed there with my father in 2009. Their Irish Breakfast is not something to write home about. And every service you want from the hotel is a charge. You want to check in early? A charge? You want breakfast now? A charge.
I toured Glasnevin Cemetery which is Ireland’s Necropolis. All the famous people are there. I got lost walking from there to Croke Park and only had to ask a few people directions. I got on the wrong tour at Croke Park, rather than walking around the top of the stadium with spectacular views of Dublin on a rare blue sky day, I visited locker rooms and the pitch itself. I cried when I realized my mistake. The tour guides took pity on me and brought me to the top of the stadium for a quick look. At that time, I thought it was the best view of Dublin I had ever had.
I then met up with my school mate who currently runs Google Ireland. He brought me up to his office on the 13 floor and showed me I was completely wrong in my assumption that I had already seen the best view in Dublin at Croke Park. Turns out the best view in Dublin is at Google’s headquarters. Having perfect weather helped amazingly. I even got to photograph the nice men in the next building chuck their empty beer bottles into the Liffey below.
As an aside, it was fun dropping my friends name at the security desk. The guards were all chatting when I walked in. I patiently waited until they gave me their attention and I told them who I wanted to see. There manner immediately became serious as they realized the VP’s friend was at their desk. They couldn’t move fast enough to get him on the phone and make sure I had everything I needed while I waited for him to descend. Such attention for the little guy who used to follow me around at school.
I didn’t trust any promises from my friends at Aer Lingus, so I took some time out from my wanderings to head over to the Aer Lingus desk at the airport. Sure enough, there was no reference to me being on the flight from Dublin to Mallorca on Tuesday. Fortunately, the nice lady at the desk straightened everything out and I was good to go.
The only hiccup on the final leg was that a million people were flying on Aer Lingus the same time I was on the way out. It was a twenty minute slog through the queue just to check in the bags. That was an unhappy jam packed terminal.
Irony gets on the plane with us in Dublin. Everybody boards and buckles up. And then nothing. We sit there. They don’t close the bulkhead door. They do this for about twenty minutes. It turns out we are waiting for another passenger who is en-route and they didn’t want him to miss his connecting flight. The door closes after a twenty minute wait.
But now we can’t take off. Our plane had a window to fly over France to avoid the storms over Spain. Since, we did not take off on time, our plane missed that slot. Our flight had to wait for the next available slot. We sat on the runway for another half hour. Good times. Yes, Aer Lingus held a plane so one more passenger could make it on the proper flight despite delaying a plane load of passengers.
Eventually I made it to Mallorca for a disastrous trip with the folks and family. We had car accidents. We had fights about everything from directions to who was cleaning up the rental unit. I got pushed around by the locals who decided I was their photographer and needed to hurry up and get the shots they wanted. I slept in a single bed that was six inches too short for my frame. It was just ugly. UGLY.
But flying back was going to be different. I had plenty of time between these connections, nothing less than two hours. I knew it was going to be great because the guys at the rental car return place didn’t even look at the damaged car to check it in.
Wheels for my Aer Lingus went up right on time. My bags were checked through all the way to New York. What could possibly go wrong?
Cue sad music.
The first thing that greeted me when I arrived at my gate at the Dublin Airport was the red notice on my departure announcement sign saying my flight was delayed ninety minutes. Sigh.
The problem here is that the plane was already at the gate. You could see it waiting at the end of the jetway. We were waiting for a plane full of passengers to come in from Rome. A lot of those passengers were scheduled for this flight. Aer Lingus decided the nice thing to do would be to wait. Once again we are holding a plane so other people could make their flight, connections be dammed.
I arrived at the Virgin America desk just as my flight home was scheduled to depart. It was the last flight out of New York for Virgin until the morning, ten hours from now. The ticket agent could only guarantee my seat on the plane if I gave him another twenty five dollars. I showed him my Visa debit card.
I spent a lot of time in the food court hogging an electrical outlet until the security came through and cleared the area. I spent four hours sitting on the floor with an eye on the Virgin Desk to make sure I was in line when they opened. I gave my bag to Airport Services so I wouldn’t have to lug it around the airport with me.
I took the train around the airport to kill time. I though about going to shoot the TWA terminal in all it’s weird glory, but I was pretty low on creative energy at this point. I just wanted to be on my last plane for a while.
At 7am, I was the second person in line. Others, who had also haunted the terminal all night jumped in front of me. But I got my ticket and went to the gate. Our plane took off on time and I flew non-stop to LAX.
So, the lesson I learned was give myself more time between flights especially if I am flying internationally. Try to change planes only once. And Aer Lingus will wait for passengers just not for me.
So much for the flickr badge idea. Dammit
