"Good morning! Let's go to Africa!": texted message received from Katie Bolger at 8:01 AM. How exciting!
The timing worked out perfectly as we found one another at the airport in the check-in line. Hugging our parents goodbye we promised to take lots of pictures, check in often, and not drink the water. After a cup of coffee, we were boarding our aircraft bound for Minneapolis/St. Paul. Time to settle in, so Katie and I bust out the in flight magazines. Did you know this particular airline had just invested about 2 billion dollars in their airline for improving planes and terminals.
I was reading about this when ... a molding strip from the overheard compartment a few rows back had fallen off! Yikes. But don't worry, the guy put it back, made a funny joke and all was great.
Until...about ten minutes later we hear a breaking noise from just above our overhead compartment. The plastic door to the compartment had broken off from the metal latch. Yikes, again!
Oh well, everything settled back in just before... the pilot came over the intercom to announce that the landing gear was not retracting so we needed to circle around and land back in Denver so that maintenance could look out it, and,
oh yeah... we hadn't burned enough jet fuel so we had to fly around for a while until the plane was light enough to land. After landing safely, we find out that there is no way we are getting to St. Paul in time to catch our flight to Amsterdam. Africa, maybe tomorrow!
However, the quote of the day, and where the silver lining comes in, is, "It was appalling!" We had quickly called the airline to book our next flight and the customer service representative was completely rude! After asking him to look into some different options that we had come up with for ways around the maintenance delay, the man said, "Ok, so are you done?!" What a terrible way of saying that leaving tomorrow is the only option! Thankfully, when we asked to speak with the ticketing supervisor at the airport, we told her of our story and the man we spoke to on the phone. "It was appalling", I said. We were quickly upgraded to first class for the first leg of our trip tomorrow, also compensated with meal vouchers for all meals until we leave, optional hotel vouchers, and future flight vouchers.
Tomorrow.... Day 1 ... First Class!
Wow, already adventurous beginning of your trip. It look like a warm up.
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