Our Emerald Isle - The Trip Over

Our Emerald Isle – The Trip Over

Bev had always told me that she never goes anywhere on a plane without something going wrong.  I have always thought that to be a wee bit of exaggeration because nothing of any consequence happened when we flew to Alaska.  Will that is not entirely true.  Our plane did abort its take off when we left Tucson and the cabin door got stuck and wouldn’t open for an hour when we landed in Anchorage, but things happen.  No big deal.  However, our trip to Ireland proved to me that perhaps there is something to what she says and causes me to seriously consider booking passage on a steam ship when it comes time to return to the states, unless the name of the ocean liner is the Titanic II, Lusitania II, the  Andrea Doria II, or something like that.

Our flight was to be nonstop to Shannon and as soon as we took off Bev went immediately to sleep.  However, about two hours out of Anchorage the captain came over the intercom and asked if there was a doctor or some sort of health practitioner on board.  A few minutes later the Captain came back over the intercom to announce that we would be making an emergency medical landing in Yellow Knife, Canada.  Several of the passengers asked our flight attended what the problem was but she declined to provide us with any information and for us not to worry.  “We will not be long in Yellow Knife,” is all we could get out of her. 

We found out later that a man had been found dead in First Class and the Air Marshall and Captain thought it only prudent to land at the nearest Air Port and remove the body.  The Air Marshall would not have been involved normally but the dead man’s sister raised such a fuss that the Marshall had to be called upon to quite her down.  She said her brother was going back to Ireland to die anyway and since he had already purchased a ticket she did not understand what the big deal was.  I sort of agreed with her.  The Flight Attended was correct, we were only in Yellow Knife for a short while.  The body was unloaded and we took off without wasting very much time.  Bev remained asleep through all of this.

A little while later the Captain came over the intercom again and said we would have to land in Portaland, Main to change crews.  We found out later that it was because of our stop in Yellow Knife and it was not possible and against regulations to travel across the Atlantic within the time limits established by Ireland’s version of the FAA and the Irish Pilot’s Union, with out changing crews.  To the credit of Aer Lingus the crew swapped places in record time and off we went.  Bev was asleep during all of this.

I finally settled down and tried to sleep thinking there would be no further problems while crossing the Atlantic.  I am not a nervous flyer but don’t really care for it.  I have always maintained that if God wanted man to fly he would have had him be born with a boarding pass.  I cannot sleep on an airplane and thought of waking Bev to see if she wanted to play cards or something, but decided to let her be.

A couple of hours went by when our new Captain came over the intercom and told us that we had to make an emergency landing in Reykjavik, Iceland.  This caused a little commotion in the economy class, it was of such a nature that Bev changed positions once in her seat.  The Captain did assure us however that it was only a safety precaution, that some sort of light had come on and they just wanted to check it out before we finished the last leg of our trip.

We were only on the runway for twenty minutes so the light thing must not have been that big of deal but I did notice that the Co-Pilot got off the plane and met a Pizza Delivery Van and exchanged a handful of money for one large pizza.  I have a suspicious mind, but no matter we were on our way again.  Bev was fast asleep.

A couple of more hours passed and as I was just about to drift off to sleep the Captain came on the intercom. “Ladies and gentleman we have started our decent into Shannon, Ireland, temperature is 12.4 C, wind out of the west south west, over cast with possible rain expected this afternoon, local time is 1 PM, attendants prepare for landing.” 

The landing went smooth enough with only one minor bump.  As we were taxiing to our gate Bev woke up.  She stretched and said “well that was a pretty uneventful trip.”