Seattle trip! ...Phew!

Good news! I have safely reached Seattle. Safely is stressed because that’s the most important part of the adventurous trip I had. To cut a long story short, British Airways plane, I boarded to London, hit one of those movable passenger stairs while taxiing on the run way. Damage was done and a quick decision by the pilot to get a node from (Indian) technicians was something we all can thank him for. As expected, it took the Indian Technicians team them 3 hours to decide that they didn’t know what has gone wrong with the plane. Then the pictures of damaged wing were passed to their British Airways counterpart in London. Meanwhile our plane was sitting on the tarmac for almost 3 hours and the crew decided to serve us some snacks as lot of passengers were hungry after the exhausting journey(from the airport terminal to the runway). The snacks were served in such a hurry that to me it looked as if they want us to have the snacks outside the plane. So I had anticipated the news of cancellation was evident. After all this drama, as expected they came back with the decision to cancel the flight. The jinxed plane started showing more signs of sickness when the fuel started flowing out of wings of the plane but according to the flight captain this is a normal phenomenon. But then fuel getting fire is also a normal phenomenon, isn’t it?

Well, our agony didn’t end here as the 500 (I guess) passengers on board started fighting for tickets for the next available flight. According to one of the crew members there were as many as 125 passengers who had a connecting flight from Heathrow. There was a chaos in the plane as everybody had a question on their face as what happens next? Looked like nobody in the plane had experienced this before including I. I observed that people from other countries started counting their Indian currency change as they had to stay for few more hours (may be days) in India because as per BA, the next available flight to London on the same route is only after 3 days. Anyways, we were asked to stay in the plane for some more time as the Indian immigration department didn’t have enough bandwidth to handle the passengers and allow us to enter again in India. Finally our stamping was cancelled and we were asked to collect our luggage and get the information from the BA counter about the next available flight. As expected, there were no London bound flight which could handle such a heavy load of passengers. They asked us to call BA helpline and get it done on individual basis. Most of the passengers were escorted to hotel but I decided to head back to home and have a warm bath and get some sleep.

So there I was back to trinity woods (my apartment in Bangalore) and being welcomed by my old roomies whom I had said a good bye on the same morning. Well, one bright side to this is I got to have the delicious egg curry and chapattis prepared by Surendra (our cook). Then I started calling BA help line until they came up with a journey route for me for the day which added a complimentary journey on King Fisher airline from Bangalore to Delhi on the same evening which I didn’t mind as I wanted to reduce the overall journey time and have some rest in Seattle even of it is at the cost of traveling extra hundred miles. I had to catch the flight to London from Delhi at 3:30 am in the morning. It also meant that I have an extended gap of 8 hrs between my BA flight to London and then the connecting flight to Seattle. I had a quick nap, took a warm bath and headed back to airport second time in the day and second time having to say good bye to Trinity Woods. This time for a change nothing went wrong with the flight and flight touched down at Heathrow, London safely and I made my way through thousands of transit passengers seeking new land for new opportunities. Heathrow is the best managed airport I have seen till date and the best part is the Quiet rooms they have at the airport. For those, who have never been seen one, these rooms are special rooms with no speakers that can disturb you with every other flight announcement and with extra comfy chairs where you can take a quick refreshing nap. Well, finally I was on my way Seattle sitting comfortably in the plane. I decided to catch a movie this time so I watched Ratatouille. A good movie and I slept immediately after watching the movie and this time when I woke up the plane was just outside the Seattle, flying over the Tiger mountain ranges with all the peaks covered with white shining snow. Plane landed on the Tacoma International Airport in Seattle and I was out in a flash. Satish (my Infosys colleague) was there to pick me up and we headed to my home. Apparently our apartment was in Bellevue not in Seattle. So this is it folks, my wonderful adventurous trip came to an end at its destination. But the journey of life continues, so enjoy it!