April 29^th - Day 31 (part 2)

The flight from hell.

After a 4 hour delay (cunningly sold as 3 1/2 hours to avoid having to feed us) we took off at 2 local time.

2 kids who screamed for over an hour from boarding. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, then for variety, a duet. I had to be moved twice. In the first seat, when a nearby child started, I took most of the skin off my left arm. After the second move, when a child started. I was screaming and banging my head on the seat in front.

So here I am at Manchester. While on the flight, the passengers were assured that on landing, there would be ground staff on hand to deal with any problems. I will come back to this in a bit.

When I finally staggered off the plane, to the announcement of the carousel where out luggage would be collected from. I duly waited at this carousel, but my bag didn't appear. Eventually, a very kind airport employee who had seen how distressed I was becoming, told me that it had also been coming out on an adjacent carousel as well!

Reunited with my bag, I cleared Customs and Immigration without problems, so went in search of the aforementioned ground staff. These were not there, so I had to trail all the qway up to Departures, where I found 3 women who didn't seem to care about my missed flight. Apparently, because I didn't book through with Etihad, it was nothing to do with them.

Left on my own, I had to trundle from one terminal to another for my flight which had long gone. I tried to book a flight for the following day, but was told their systems had closed for the night.

By now I was in tears. I rang Gill, to let her know that I would not be on the plane she was expecting to pick me up from. Gill booked me an overnight accomodation (back at the same hotel I had stated from) and a flight for the following day, as well as arranging for an airport padre to come and help me. I don't think I would have survived without her help.