March 1, 1998 - Sunday

Flight from Hell

We left Costa Rica and arrived in Miami without any problems. We landed in Miami at 6:30PM and my connection flight was suppose to be at 7:30PM, but when I got there, it was already delayed until 8:30PM. The flight didn't leave until 9:00PM. I was tempted to demand for a change of flight because I had to be in Pennsylvania for the 3:00PM closing on my house the next day. I should have done it. It was about 12:00 midnight by the time we started our "holding pattern" over Hartford because they (American Airlines) first claimed that the airport had lost electricity so we couldn't land, then they claimed that it was fogged in.

We were rerouted to an old airforce airport in the Catskills, New York instead. The airport was small and it was in the process of being converted to a civilian airport. It actually didn't look too bad, but nobody was in a good mood when we landed at 1:00AM. We sat in the plane while it sat in the taxi area for an hour while the plane refueled, then they said the airport is too foggy so we had to exit here, except that we had to wait another 40 minutes because there's only one terminal that's operational.

They planned to bus us to Hartford instead. We all got out at 2:30AM, and nobody was in a good mood. We didn't start leaving until after 3:00AM and the bus driver took a wrong route so we didn't get into Hartford until 5:30AM. It was the worse flight experience of my life. I managed to sleep 2.5 hours before driving 5+ hours (traffic jam) to PA, close on my house, grabbed a quick dinner and then drove another 4 hours back. I needed a vacation!