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Archive for December 29th, 2009

Flying in the world of Today…

2009-12-29Where in the world am I today?: At Sea aboard the Monarch of the Seas.

Bit touch and go getting out of Vancouver on Sunday as I made my way down to Florida to join the Monarch of the Seas. Now I should preface this by saying that I’m not a big consumer of ‘The News.’ I don’t have newspaper deliver, don’t watch the News on television, don’t really pay much attention to what’s going on via the Internet, yet in spite of this (perhaps because of this) I seem to survive quite successfully in the world by picking up on what’s relevant by what I glean from actual human contact. Who’da thunk…

If I’m a bit out of touch to begin with, well then Christmas and Boxing Day put me even further behind the eight ball because I’d been purposefully ignoring my computer so I could spend time with my wife and kids… I totally missed the recent terrorist bombing attempt of NW Flight 253 in the Detroit area by a Nigerian Man that strapped some sort of explosive device to his body and set it off as the flight was coming into Detroit… The result? Heightened security at all airports…

Holy Cow! Security at YVR on Sunday was INSANE!

Over two hours in line to get through security and then the added fun of doing the immigration two step and the mad dash to the gate on the off chance that the flight hadn’t left yet… Thankfully it hadn’t but I was certainly the last one on the flight and this after having arrived over three hours prior to departure. From what I understand the reason why I was able to make the flight at all was because it was late arriving as a result of increased security at another airport that the plane had come from prior to it’s arrival into Vancouver. One delay lead to the next and then to the next… The departure out of Vancouver was delayed so much that there was no way on earth that I was going to make the connection in Minneapolis and as a result I ended up spending the night in a hotel near the Airport on North West’s dime.

In such situations it’s usually best not to get too freaked out, but to just roll with the punches and make the best of the situation. In my particular case in this particular instance this wasn’t all that difficult. The Northwest Agent I dealt with was great about issuing me meal vouchers, getting me a hotel voucher and booking me on a flight the next morning to Orlando that got me in with plenty of time to make the ship before it departed. In fact, having the evening at the hotel in Minneapolis allowed me a great opportunity to get caught up on some emails and business and the next day when I boarded the plane I discovered that I had been upgraded to First Class. So… In some ways I was further ahead as a result of the chaos.

Still this sort of confusion can at times get a bit stressful as you play out the very uncomfortable scenario of not actually making it to the ship in time. I guess that’s why most cruise lines like to fly you in a day before you’re meant to join the ship. Nine times out of ten it would be fine to fly and join the ship on the same day as it sets sail, but that one time in ten having the extra time really can save your bacon!


 
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