FLIGHT DELAY! (June 12th 2009)

Today is the 12th June and today we are due to fly to Belize. Yay!

Our flight left at 10:20am with no hicups at all, accept we weren't on it!

Long story short, we could not get to the airport at the time we needed to. We arrived at the airport 9:20am. We jump out of the truck, throw our 6 suitcases together and run into the terminal (I think I said thanks for the ride). We go straight to the self check in thingy. Its now 9:30 we punch in our details and it tells us, "Im sorry you are to late to check in please see an attendant" AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH we missed the stupid thing by 10 mins!!!!!!!

We go up to the normal check in and tell the lady what happened, shes like, whatever, "you have missed this flight we will have to try and get you on the next available flight, we can put you on standby but you might not get on that flight either". She then told me that the next flight didn’t
leave until 1:15pm! As you can imagine I was not a happy camper. We checked our bags and went through security and headed off to try and find a phone to call Teri and Renee (this is the couple picking us up in Dangriga).

The only phone we could find was a big walk and when we got there it would only take coins, which we had none of. I tried to change $2usd into coins but no one would, so we had to walk all the way back to where we came from to buy something to eat and ask for change at the same time. Finally we get some and the first phone we use eats the money and doesn’t connect the call, the 2nd phone we wouldn’t connect either but at least it gave our money back. The third phone, we think connected to Teri’s phone but then cut off as she answered, so we lost that money too! Meanwhile $4nzd had been spent and we hadn’t been able to reach anyone. We had no more money left at this point so we gave up. We had tried our best and could do no more. We just had to hope that Renee and Teri would figure things out and not panic.

We went up to the counter and told the staff we were on standby and did they have any seats. They did and we actually got reasonable seats. 12:30 and we’re sitting waiting for our flight to board and there’s an announcement. "Flight 2173 to Belize has been delayed and we will let you know when boarding will start". Well an hour went by and then another and still no boarding. Another announcement "passengers flying to Belize on flight 2173, we are experiencing delays as the plane from Dallas, which is to be used for your flight to Belize has been delayed, we expect the plane to arrive at 2:45 and we will let you know as soon as it arrives". More waiting. 2:45 comes and still no plane. 3:00, an announcement, " Thank you for your patience, the plane from Dallas has now arrived and we need to wait for the aircraft to be cleaned, as soon as that is done we will start boarding all passengers" More waiting. Another announcement, "Thank you again for your patience, we are sorry to tell you that although the plane is now clean we have no crew to fly the plane so we are trying to arrange for the crew from Dallas to take you through to Belize. We will let you know as soon as we do, when we will be boarding" 10mins later, " We are pleased to inform you that the crew from Dallas will be taking you through to Belize and we will start boarding the plane now, stating with group A". We jump up as that’s us, we get on the plane and it fills up, nothing strange there. However 20mins or so goes by and we are still on the ground. Why? Everyone is asking. Another announcement, "Hi folks, this is your captain, we're experiencing a slight delay as there is a change of ground crew and we currently don’t have anyone to help back the plane out" OKAY NOW WHAT ELSE CAN HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!! Soon the plane starts moving and we are on our way, the time is about 3:45pm. Only 2 and a half hours late departing that’s all. Oh that’s if you don’t count our missed flight! If you do then it was only a 5 hour 15min delay!

Time travel set in going to Belize again, as we arrived at about 3:15pm after a 1 ½ hour flight. It just so happens that because we were so delayed in leaving Miami two planes arrived in Belize at the same time. This is highly unusual as the airport is tiny and there really is only room for one flight full of people at a time inside. We all stood shoulder to shoulder like cattle in blistering heat, no air-conditioning in this part of the building. We are in the line to get to security for just over 45 minutes! (this might have been the longest wait out of all our flights) We get through customs and are hoping that our bags managed to get on the right plane, considering the standby thing and that they aren’t in Africa somewhere.

As two planes came in there was not room on the baggage carousel for all the bags so they are thrown all over the floor, piled against walls, etc, quite funny really. We found our bags and then, not so funny, one of the bags has been ripped open down one side right through to the lining and the metal wire that runs around the outside of the bag is pulled out and almost off! WHAT ELSE CAN HAPPEN!!!!! So we take the bag to the American Airlines lady and said this isn’t good enough, what are you going to do? She said that if we can get the bag back to them they will try and fix it, if they cannot then they will replace it. Okay that sounds good as long as I can get the bag back to them! HOW I DON’T KNOW. She says "how are you getting to Dangriga?" We said,
"Well we had a flight booked for 12:30 but we missed that so we will have to try and get another one". She says, "well you better hurry, the last flight leaves at 4:20! If you travel with them you can put the bag back on the plane at any stage and they will fly it back to us to fix". So we start running, the time is 4:10 (sound familiar) we get to the dude who wants to know do we have food to declare, we say "yes we have coffee, chocolate etc" he says " that’s fine but do you have more than $5000 BZE dollars on you?" I actually laughed out loud and said " we would love to have that much but no we don’t". He very skeptically let us through. Again, of all the airports, this was the only one that asked about that stuff. So we get through the whole customs thing and are heading to the Maya Air check in.

The time is 4:15. We tell the guy who we are and what had happened, he was wonderful and very helpful but told us that as we had missed our earlier flight we would have to go on standby for the next available one, which was the last one of the day and that it was unlikely that we would be able to get on it. We just looked at each other and laughed, what else could go wrong, well every little, possible thing! We went to Tropic air and they said the same thing, we asked about catching a bus and they were finished for the day too.

Now we were thinking, okay now what, we have no phone to call Teri, we have no way of getting to Dangriga and we have nowhere to stay, oh and we’re in a foreign country where the world stops literally at 4:30!! We asked the very nice man at Maya air if we could please use his phone, he said yes, so we rung Teri and got her straight away. She said she would try and figure something out for us but we didn’t have a phone so she couldn’t ring us back! Bad to worse, hmm yes! The nice man said that she could ring back on the same line and he would come and get us when she called. About 10mins later she called and told us to catch a taxi and go to such and such address, a sister lives there and we can stay with her for the night. From there we could call her back and arrange how we would get to Dangriga the next day. We jump in a taxi and go to the sisters house. She is delightful and welcomes us in with open arms. Its as if we have known her for years! Her house is beautiful, a palace by Belize standards and Teri told us not to get used to it as they have nothing like that in Dangriga! We laughed and told her we weren’t going to Dangriga anymore we were staying with this sister forever.

That was our delightful adventure trip into Belize, not one I would like to repeat in a hurry. Mind you we have just had 6 flights in three weeks and this was the first one we had any problems with, thats pretty good going.

We had a wonderful night with Dell and her family, that story will come next. Dont miss it!