We arrived in Guntur yesterday, at about 5am. The adventure, however, began shortly after we left Detroit.
My father is keeping a detailed journal our of trip so far, so I will post his words today. (He insists he is not a blogger and does not even read them, but I told him that in fact he *is* a blogger -- he just doesn't post anything on the internet. Perhaps that will change.)
Photos courtesy of my old 2M point 'n' shoot camera... :)
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Friday, January 18Our trips from home to Detriot were relatively uneventful. Bruce caught an earlier plane than scheduled in order to allow more time for the connection. Eric's flight was delayed by 45 minutes but this allowed us enough time to have a snack before the NWA flight to Amsterdam. Our reserved seats side by side somehow became one behind the other. Our seatmates were not open to negotiation but we were able to maintain a semblance of conversation.
The trip began to unravel when the pilot called for a "doctor in the house." I noticed that we had just crossed the eastern shore of Labrador. There was the expected amount of movement as people of varying medical skills stepped forward.
At that point the medical need was anyone's guess, so thoughts of an emergency landing began to arise. We were right over Goose Bay, Labrador, the old trans-Atlantic refuelling airport that got so much notice in the aftermath of 9/11 when the 900 inhabitants hosted over 6000 stranded passengers for a number of days. In the 50's either Goose Bay or Gander was said to have the most flights of any airport in the world.
The pilot came on the loudspeaker from time to time, once for a request for anyone with any kind of diuretic pills. The crisis turned out to be about 5 rows behind us on the opposite aisle so we could see the cluster of concerned relatives and volunteer medical experts. It was clear during what seemed like a hour that the crisis was not going away.
Then we noticed that our flight track on the monitor indicated that we were half way between Labrador and Greenland and our flight track had curled around. We were heading for Newfoundland! This was soon confirmed by the pilot.
The return seemed to take hours even though it could have been only 45 minutes. It seemed as though we were descending and flying slower. By now it was the middle of the night, mid winter, and there was a blizzard raging on the ground. This would be a total instrument landing with zero visibility.
Gander is north of St. John's Newfoundland and far enough inland to be clear of coastal fog. That did not matter in the blizzard. Although equipped for a lot of air traffic, it has had relatively little use in the jet age. Without doubt the airport had to scurry to prepare for our arrival.
We parked in sight of the terminal and the medical team soon boarded the plane to attend to the patient, an elderly woman who probably should not have flown. She had failed to take a prescribed diuretic and her lungs were filling with fluid. Apparently she had come equipped with oxygen but not her pills. Pretty soon she was taken off the plane, joined by a couple who were travelling with her. Now what?
The pilot explained that when anyone leaves the plane, their checked bags must be removed as well. This was a full jumbo jet and it was below zero outside with a strong enough wind to make the snow fly horizontally. The find the right bags, the pods of baggage needed to be removed. It would take about 30 minutes to extract from a snowbank the machine that offloads baggage! He hoped that we could be back on our way in a couple of hours.
The last delay was a wait for the de-icing equipment. It was then that we learned that two other planes were on the runway being de-iced and we had to wait our turn.
Once in the air we, like greedy ambulance-chasing lawyers, asked whether we could have the two side-by-side seats that were vacated by the medical evacuation. Granted.
The rest of the flight to Amsterdam was uneventful and we arrived 4.5 hours late. Almost everyone on the plane had missed a connection. In fact, there was an unusually large number of people travelling to India. Not all were booked on our flight to Hyderabad, but it was a challenge to find available seats on any of the next flights in that direction. KLM greeted us with alternate plans for everyone.
At this stage we got to know some members of a medical mercy team that goes to India at this time every year and does free surgery. There were 40 team members on our flight and they had checked a large amount of medical equipment including specialized surgical equipment. Their plans were to handle 600 patients in 14 days working 12 hours a day.
The alternate travel plans resulted in the group being broken up, some directed through Dubai, some through Mumbai and others through Delhi. We just waited for the dust to settle to learn what was in store for us. It was a route that took us to Heathrow and then Mumbai before reaching Hyderabad. On paper it looked as though our bags could keep up with us.
Arriving at our gate for London we learned that our flight, assigned just a few moments earlier, had been consolidated with a later flight an hour later. Our 2 hour connection in London had just shrunk to a 1 hour connection. The reason for the consolidation was that landing times at Heathrow were at a premium. A British Air 777 (new) had come in for a landing earlier and lost power on approach. The plane dropped to the ground short of the runway and the landing gear plowed into the soil (or brush or whatever). It came to rest as one engine dug into the ground. No one was injured and all passengers and crew were safely removed. The carcass of the plane still sits at the beginning of the runway and the number of landings per hour has been reduced.
So once again, we learned that we did not have time to catch our connection to India and, after a wait that seemed like an hour, were given a new route to Hyderabad through Mumbai (Bombay). What about our bags?
We recognized a man from our Detriot flight who was the head of the medical mercy team. To get all of his team in the air they had to use all of the options and he had to pick one person to follow our route. He chose to do it himself.
His concern was for all of the medical equipment that had been part of a group checkin. With the group dispersed, how would they route the equipment? There was nothing that they could do in India without the equipment. We don't know how that worked out.
This brings up an interesting "triage" question. Should the plane have returned to Gander? What were the woman's chances of surviving to Amsterdam? Meanwhile the disruption of that team alone would cost a loss of one or more days of surgery. At 300 patients a week this would mean that about 40 patients a day would not get their surgery. We have no idea how that story played out.
Air India from Heathrow to Mumbai was OK. It was a older plane, a Boeing 767, but had seats that I had never before experienced. Instead of the back hinging below your seat and the reclining position being on the lap of the person behind you, this seat seemed to hinge beside your hip bones. As you tipped back your legs and feet rose so you could get more into a reclining position without seeming to intrude on the person behind you. We had better sleeps on that flight.
As Mumbai was in India, we had to clear customs. We also had to really address the problem of the bags. When it was clear that they were not coming off the plane, we had to fill out customs documents so that the bags could be admitted into the country and sent to us. Eric did a masterful job of handling things as I (Bruce) explained that I was his elderly father and he was looking after me.
If you ever have a choice whether to travel through Mumbai airport or not, choose not to. By the time that we completed the baggage ritual we had a mere 30 minutes to make our connection. Now we realized that we would depart from the domestic terminal, a different building. To get there you could wait for a bus, but we were advised to take a taxi. We had no Indian currency and managed to prepay the taxi ride with a credit card.
We emerged from the International terminal into Bombay streets. We seemed to be taking more left turns than right turns, but otherwise I couldn't image where we were going. Slowly it became apparent that we were still in the vicinity of the airport and got back into airport traffic.
Presenting ourselves at the checkin counter, we had to get our Air India flight papers converted into boarding passes (or was it tickets?) We imagined that we could sprint to the gate and catch the plane. No. Eric was told that there was one seat left on the plane and was haded a boarding pass for me to go ahead. We said "no way" and were then given "good as gold" tickets for the following flight to Hyderabad on Jet Airways -- a bit of a consolation, as Jet has very nice planes and service. Too bad the flight was only an hour. Actually I liked it because I slept most of it. I was awakened and asked if I wanted a snack. I hadn't realized that we were already in the air. Eric said that I slept through a very bumpy takeoff!
We arrived in Hyderabad without further incident.
