Well, here I am back in Tennessee...the trip back ended up being quite eventful. My first flight arrived in Charlotte 20 minutes late, leaving no time to grab dinner before my connection flight took off. I rushed to Gate D6 only to find out my plane was patiently waiting for the matience crew to arrive, they didn't know when that would happen. So I resisted the hunger pains in my stomach, and waited around to see when we would board. Finally, we were ready to board at 9:00. That wasn't so bad. The flight was supposed to leave at 8:50. 10 minutes, no biggie right? Did I mention it was SNOWING in Charlotte??? After boarding the plane, we sat at the gate until nearly 10:00 (which is the time my plane was scheduled to arrive in Knoxville) waiting to get paper work finished (something about the weight on the plane and how much baggage we had). Around 10, we were on our way to have the plane de-iced, when we hear an annoucement from our captian. He said "The FAA has taken over our de-icing ramp, and is letting planes from other airlines use it, so we are going to have to wait awhile. While we waited, they put more fuel into the plane. After they refueled the plane, we started toward the de-ice line. I counted about 7 planes ahead of us, and I don't think I could see them all. Another hour passes. It is now 11:00. I am thinking to myself, boy will I be tired when I start teaching first grade in about 7 hours. Well, at 11, after we had been waiting for de-icing for over an hour, our co-pilot timed out. This meant he had been working for 16 hours and could not fly anymore. So off we go, back to the gate, losing our precious spot in the de-icing line, to get a new co-pilot. There was a little confusion when we arrived at the gate, and the crew started unpacking our luggage. Luckily they didn't get very far before they were stopped. Well, the new co-pilot meant they had to re fill out the paperwork, so we were stuck at the gate for about another hour. At this point the flight attendant graciously passed out water and bags of snack mix. She even let us have 2 bags of snack mix! Well, about 12:00 we got back in the de-icing line. Anita was supposed to pick me up at the airport, and I was earnestly praying that she hadn't been waiting for me since 10:00. Around 12:30, while still waiting to be de-iced, our fearless captian, annouced that we were 3rd in line to be de-iced so it shouldn't be long now. We waited. And Waited. And Waited. Charlotte is about a 4 hour drive to Knoxville. Finally, at about 2:15, our plane was de-iced, and we could leave. I've never been so excited to be in the air in my life. I finally reached the door to my apartment at 4 am, and decided it would be pretty useless of me to attempt to teach first graders today. At least the flight wasn't canceled. Things can always get worse!

  posted by Elizabeth @ 2:02 PM