Michael

Flying back from Frankfurt turned into quite an adventure. The first problem was that our 747 encountered a technical malfunction before take off. Translation – technical malfunction means jet fuel leaking out of the plane.

We waited two hours for another 747 from Los Angeles to land. Luggage and passengers were safely moved to the new plane. After a 7 ½ hour flight we neared Boston only to be told that there was snowy weather, so we flew in a holding pattern for 30 minutes while ground crews cleared the runway.

The pilot began the approach to land. Around 1800 foot elevation, the captain aborted the landing with the engines gunning hard. Quite an interesting experience! The captain put us in another holding pattern as the ground crews tried to clear the runway of snow and put down a chemical to increase the braking coefficient, which was too low on the first attempt.

After flying in circles for another 45 minutes, Boston airport officially shut down and we were directed to Bangor, Maine. The airport is small there except for the exceptionally long runway on the adjoining Air Force base. Several other flights were directed here as Boston was still closed. We were to wait on the plane until we could fly back to Boston.

Unfortunately, the flight crew was informed that they had reached their flying limit for a 24 hour period. So, the plan was for us to wait on the tarmac until they could fly a fresh crew up from Boston to pilot the 747. The new crew never arrived as Boston Logan Airport never re-opened.

We sat on the plane for another hour and then we were herded into a large waiting room in the Bangor Airport to wait for our luggage to be unloaded. That took 45 minutes. Next was a quick run through customs, then find our luggage and get on a bus to the Fairfield Inn. I had reserved a room three hours early. Overall I had been up for 25 hours and 5 minutes. It felt like 26 hours!

I kept my spirits up by laughing at the entire situation. It was a much better choice then what others were making, but generally most people on the flight were upbeat which was great. A kind of camaraderie happened since we were all sharing the saga, which is good since we felt like we had been packed into a can of sardines.