Stories from Spain: Airline Mishaps

Traveling anywhere far requires airline travel, especially if one is going to Europe and doesn’t own some private yacht that can get you there. So of course, the airport is where my recent journey to Spain began. If my airline travel would have been uneventful, I would have far less stories to tell, and what would be the fun in that? At least that’s what I tell myself now, but at the time I longed for a few less stories.

The journey to Madrid began in New Orleans. The woman who checked our baggage in kept mumbling about our luggage being five minutes late. She eventually called a supervisor over who approved it going through. This would come back on us when later reached Madrid and our luggage did not. More on that later though.

In Miami, we had a connecting flight to Madrid. When we boarded the plane, someone was sitting in our seat. It turned out the airline had given us both the same seat, and they had made it to the seat first. After standing in the aisle a long time waiting for the attendants to fix the problem, and having all the other passengers sitting in seats that only they were assigned to staring at us, we were assigned new seats in what luckily for us were two of the few empty seats in the back.

It wasn’t until we reached Spain that we realized that our luggage would not be joining us just yet. Discovering this in Spain presented a communication barrier being they spoke Spanish and we did not. At one point, the lady at the desk was trying to dismiss us in what I recognized as the tone you use with someone you think is being utterly stupid, but I had managed to stick my finger in my eye and was crying. Not intentionally, of course. But I did notice her tone changed when she thought I was crying. Not that it got us any answers or any more help in locating our luggage which didn’t arrive until the end of the second night.

Our airline stories did not end there though because, of course, we did have to trek back home eventually.

Nearly three weeks after arriving, our flight home from Barcelona was delayed six hours. First, the attendants came on and said thirty minutes, then it was two and half hours, then three and half hours. All to fix a mechanical malfunction. After four hours, we had finally boarded the plane and were idling and waiting for take-off only for the captain to come on and tell us they had fixed the wrong part and would be fixing the part while we waited on the plane.
Finally, six hours after we were supposed to leave, the captain came on in a tone of voice usually reserved for bad news (Seriously, he should work on that.) to announce we’d be leaving.

We were told we had to fly to New York for a fuel refill and crew change, but we would only remain for thirty minutes and then leave for our connector flights in Miami. Only when we reached New York, we were told we must exit the plane and go through customs. American Airlines did have everything ready for us waiting as we exited the plane though. Some passengers were able to get immediate connecting flights, but we had to stay in New York overnight and return to the airport early the next morning to fly directly into New Orleans.

Thankfully, that last part was uneventful and our luggage managed to arrive with us. I wouldn’t say airplane travel is my favorite mode of transportation, but it certainly offers experiences unlike any other. It after all, brought me to wonderful experiences in Spain, and many more stories that I will share over the next few weeks.