Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Alisa's blog about her hesitancy to fly reminded me of a story of a trip our family had taken a few years ago. My in-laws live in Cape Cod, Massachusetts which is about 1,000 miles from Indianapolis. Many times, we've completed this trip by car and it takes about 17 hours to do so. With young kids, it seems like the trip is about 17 days so this particular year we decided to fly into Boston and have the in-laws pick us up.

The trip out there was fine. Even with a three, five and eight-year old, the quick trip was certainly less stressful than driving. We always have a great time on the Cape and it's a relaxing time for all of us.

But then there was the trip home.

Our flight was to leave Boston fairly early in the morning so we got to Logan Airport, checked our bags, made it through security and proceeded to our gate to catch our plane. We got on the plane and was off to our layover in D.C. After a short time at Dulles Airport, our flight was off and headed to Indy.

Or so we thought.

A few minutes into the flight the pilot made an announcement that we had lost an engine but should be fine although it would delay our arrival in Indy. After about another ten minutes, the pilot came on the P.A. system, asked the stewardesses to take a seat and noted that we were turning around to head back to Dulles.

No problem I thought. The plane is still in the air. What's the worst that could happen? Of course the words "we're turning around" brought fear to most passengers in the plane and it became deafly quiet. Still, I wasn't that worried until I looked out the window.

Now, being a surveyor, I love the window seat because I can see different properties and how cities have been developed over time.

This time I didn't like what I saw out my window.

As we started to make our approach to Dulles, I happened to notice that one runway was lined with several emergency vehicles. Okay, not just any runway - OUR runway. I didn't know until later but we had lost another engine and the pilot wasn't sure that he was going to be able to get the plane stopped before running off the end of the runway. Fortunately, the landing was pretty uneventful and we taxied back to the terminal.

We sat in the terminal for a couple of hours before we were told that they finally had some flights that we could get on to continue our trip. Unfortunately, these flights were originating at National Airport so they put us and our luggage on buses for the trip there.

While we were on the bus, an announcement was made that there were four flights available and that we'd all get on one of them. Some how, we lucked out as we were told that we would be on the first flight out of National. Maybe it was the fact that we had three young kids that were getting restless.

As soon as we got off of the bus and collected our luggage, we headed directly to the counter to get our tickets and boarding passes for the flight. Sure enough, we had been scheduled to go out on the very first flight available.

The one that had taken off five minutes before we got there.

I'm normally a pretty patient person but when I got to the counter at about 4:00 in the afternoon the lady there asked "and how are you today, sir?" At this point, I had had enough and replied, "I'm not very happy but that's okay because I'm going to Disney World for free." When she inquired what I had meant by that statement, I let her know that I was not leaving the line without complimentary air tickets in my hand. She went and got her supervisor who brought me five vouchers for free tickets for anytime within the next year. On a side note, we did use them to go to Disney World later that year.

Anyway, she informed me that there were no other flights that she could get us on but she'd put us up at a hotel for the night and give us food vouchers. I explained in no uncertain terms that I was not going to be spending the night in D.C. and that I'd be flying another airline home. At this point, she was just trying to get the crazy guy (me) out of the line so she got us booked on a flight from D.C. to Cincinnati and another from Cincy to Indy through Delta.

We made our way to the new terminal and sat down to wait for our flight. As it was dinner time, my wife and my oldest child took off with the food vouchers to find something for all of us to eat. She ordered dinner for all of us and handed the cashier the vouchers. The vouchers were worth more than the cost of our dinner but the cashier told her that he could not give her the difference back in change. Seeing two Delta stewardesses in line behind her and thinking quickly on her feet, she told the cashier that she was buying their dinner, too, since they were getting us home and making sure she spent all of the other carrier's money.

We finally got into the airport at Indy, I retrieved our car from long-term parking and we headed home.

We pulled into the garage at 1:30 a.m. - about 17 1/2 hours from the time we had left Cape Cod.

Yep, that's right - we could have driven and gotten home earlier.