And it’s off we go again, this time to Frankfurt for a work trip to the Sears Armed Forces Classic (I do work in advertising after all, and Sears is enabling me to even make this trip happen so thanks guys).

The day started with Nor’easter Athena, who arrived at noon by dumping snow, t-minus 8 hours before departure.  In an effort to avoid traffic and cab hailing issues which would inevitably arise from inclement weather and the gas shortage caused by Hurricane Sandy, I decided to be practical and take the subway and LIRR out to Jamaica.  I thought I was pacing well, getting on the 4:59pm train that would only take 20 minutes to get to Jamaica.  Not only was the train delayed in leaving (really just goes hand in hand with snow), but it ran slowly the entire way, crawling closer and closer to Jamaica, and then…crawling past Jamaica.  What?!  Somehow I missed my exit.  They had made a very muted announcement that only (garblegarblegarble) doors would open at Jamaica…apparently that was not my car’s door.  There was nothing I could do now, but to continue onto the next stop, Lynbrook.  By this point, the snow was sticking, it was freezing, and I was not dressed in any way to be out in this weather.  After a fruitless search for a taxi (not sure if this was supposed to make me feel better about my original decision), I chose to just take the same train back towards the city to get off at Jamaica.  Trust me, I made sure this door was going to open.  Unfortunately, I was just getting back on the train at 6:15pm, roughly 2 hours before departure, my original ETA at the airport.  With the train time, and long AirTrain commute time, I ended up getting to the airport just an hour before we were supposed to leave.

By some miracle of the travel gods (one day this is gonna come back and bite me, or maybe just later on in my journey), I arrived at JFK at 7:05pm and checked in, dropped my luggage, went through security, and got to the gate 5 minutes later.  I guess this is what happens when everyone else is already checked in.  I ran to the gate, only to find…no plane.  We were obviously nowhere near ready to board.  All that praying for a delay helped, because we ended up getting delayed by TEN hours.  Here’s what happened:

8:10pm: original departure…did not happen

9:30pm: plane finally arrives, but they need to tow it to the gate (is that even a good sign?!)

10:30pm: plane at gate, now they need to clean it up

12am: finally board plane

12:30am: done boarding, gate closes

1am: begin de-icing plane

1:30am: pull out of the gate…yes, we must finally be on our way!

2am: flight crew announces they cannot complete the flight because it will cause them to max out on hours they can spend on one consecutive journey.  Back to gate.  Whee!

3:30am: they decide to finally feed us.  Latest dinner ever.  PS: they can’t serve alcohol when we’re on the ground for some reason.

5am: new flight crew finally arrives, announce they need 45 minutes to de-ice the plane…again.

6:30am: takeoff! (officially 10 hours and 20 minutes after original scheduled departure)

I know this seems really boring, but that’s the point.  It was.  And now you got to experience it with me 🙂

I’m glad I already got to fly Singapore Airlines once this year and had an excellent experience, because this certainly was no fun.  It was by no means Singapore Air’s fault, and if I had to be stuck on a plane for 10 hours on the ground, Singapore Air would be it, but that’s not the point, is it…