All Too Frequent Flying

1 — Flights seem a lot shorter when your seat can turn into a bed.

2 — Airplane blankets really cannot warm you enough when
        you’re sleeping on the floor of the airport.

3 — When you’re in business class, suddenly everyone wants
        to serve you mojitos and extra desserts.

So you’ve probably already guessed that I like the rest of New York was stranded last week at the mercy of a Grinch blizzard.

After sitting on the tarmac for 4 hours my apologetic British Airways captain canceled our JFK – Heathrow flight at 3:30 am.

Because by the time they’d scraped off the ice, sprayed anti-freeze on the wings, cleared the path with tractors, and slowly inched out to the runway, the surface of the plane had already frozen over making it dangerous (forget illegal) to fly.

Filing back out into Terminal 7 with hundreds of other disgruntled & crusty-eyed passengers we were further informed that – because British Airways holds no apparent powers over weather – they would not be providing us hotel accommodations for the night – or any guarantee that we would be able to rebook a flight by Christmas.

Also, there are no vehicles going in or out of JFK.

Essentially it was like a middle school lock-in except no one had sleeping bags, Cheetos, glow-in-the-dark paint, or any hope of getting home by Christmas.

Yet there was much middle school aged angst spat at the gate attendants.

There was nothing then to be done but to find a patch of floor that satisfied a mathematical equation involving the variables of carpeting, relative seclusion, and proximity from snorers / pervasive smooth Christmas intercom music.

Here we slept from 4 am to 6:45 am, waiting for the 1-800 number everyone stranded would call when the lines opened at 7 am in hopes of vocally elbowing their way onto a not-already-packed Christmas plane. Somehow, magically, after less than 10 minutes of Brazillian Christmas blues hold music, a sympathetic British woman answered my call and booked us two seats to Shanghai on the 22nd – landing on the morning of the 24th, just in time for Christmas.

There was one problem, she said.

“You’re going to fly Business Class.”

What a bummer.

En lieu of our bags still being trapped at the airport, I spent the next few days bumming around Union Square. My sister spent them on battling her suffocating tonsils, doses of steroids, and blood tests that confirmed her case of mononucleosis and explained her debilitating narcolepsy.

Too bad that in rationing orange juice at JFK I’d already shared a bottle with her.

The flight to London a few days later cheered us up though, especially after a jaunt on a Queens subway. In fact, we even had enough time to stuff ourselves full of Sun Chips and Oreos at the British Airways Galleries Lounge.

I quickly took advantage of the open bar.

Our plane itself was ridiculous. We were scared at the gate because no one was there.

We checked our tickets – surely this was the right place?

The lady let us in and when we saw the plane we understood.

There were no people because the plane only seated 8 rows.

I then proceeded to consume a champagne cocktail, swab some complimentary lavender night cream under my eyes, and listen to the dulcet tones of the purser describe in what was barely a whisper that tonight’s Sleeper Service Club World flight would be serving a night cap and one of the crew would be meeting with us individually to scribe our menu decisions for this and for our breakfast options.

The tomato mozzarella panini with wild berry trifle was almost sexual.

I didn’t bother with breakfast. My seat-turned-flying-bed was too comfortable.

Too bad we had to dash out of London City Airport before we could take advantage of our complimentary facials and finagle our way through the early morning London Underground maze to Heathrow on the other side.

Now that we were pros at Business Class, our next flight seemed unremarkable and passed just as quickly.

 
And how good it is to be home.
 
      *       *       *       *       *
 
Except the next day we flew out to Phuket, Thailand,
and I’m currently enjoying a penthouse villa with a
pool on the roof, and that’s pretty good too.