Stranded

Well this post is a little out of date but I'm going to make it anyway because it's a story full of woe and needs to be told from the beginning. And actually it shows what a bad blogger I am as it leaves out an entire trip to a new country.

So 2 weeks ago I flew to Canada with Zoom Airlines. A cheapish airline that operates between North America and Europe. Basically it concentrated on flying across the Atlantic.

After 10 days in lovely Nova Scotia (pics to follow) I was ready to fly home to London and then to Croatia the next day to see Dubrovnik and sail with friends for a week. Yes I've been looking forwards to these holidays for a while. So after a last frantic day running around Halifax I go to the airport and find out that my plane has been delayed by 2 hours. Inconvenient but not the end of the world. What I don't find out is just how far behind schedule the flight actually is.

The plane that I was meant to be catching flies the same route every time. It goes London Gatwick (London has 4 airports in case you didn't know), Halifax, Ottawa, and then back through Halifax to Gatwick again. Now today there had been a problem with the camera that shows the pilot that the landing gear is down. He still had an indicator light to verify this but it was procedure to fix the camera before taking off.

This problem was found while the plane was in Halifax, before the plane had made it to Ottawa. So unknown to me when I was checking in, the plane that was meant to be waiting to take me to London still had to fly to Ottawa and back before it could take me anywhere. The passengers who had flown from Gatwick and heading to Ottawa that morning had been on the plane, on the tarmac, for at least 6 hours already that day.

So after 4 hours of waiting in the airport I was quite bored and utterly unprepared to hear that there was a problem with my flight and that I should go to the check-in desk. Which is on the outside of the secure area and pretty bad news for anyone wanting to fly out of Halifax.

At the check-in desk they told us that due to the problem with the plane they couldn't fly that night and they'd have to ship us off to a hotel so we could fly the next morning. We would all board the plane, fly to Ottawa and then fly direct from there to London. This was bad but nnot too bad. I would still have a night in London and could fly to Croatia with Sarah and everybody the next day.

The next morning dawned dull but cheerful. Nova Scotia is cloudy at this time of year. We were at the airport and finally after another random delay boarded the plane about midday. It wasn't good, we were going to get to London Gatwick very late and if there was any more slippage the public transport wasn't going to be running and I'd have to get a taxi. Little did I realise that I should be worrying about slightly bigger problems.

I settled into my seat and was grumping with the other passengers near about the delay and the fact that we were waiting for a few passengers to turn up. They'd checked in but gone missing. Then the pilot came on and told us we all had to get off the plane and go to a transit lounge. Oh the pandemonium, the unhappiness. We were delayed again. Or were we?

After 10 minutes in the transit lounge we discovered the truth. Zoom Airlines had gone bust. The company was insolvent and the planes were grounded. My ticket back home was useless and there was no chance of getting back to London in time for my onward flight to Croatia. I was stranded.

To be continued...