Leaving and Not
After bringing all passengers from the hotel to the airport at 2:30 PM we had to wait for an hour in the check in line, plus 20 minutes when we first arrived when there were no staff in sight. Getting to the Departure lounge at 3:45 PM I have been waiting ever since. It is now 7:20 and the British Airways flight is still not here. BA has taken out todays passengers, and theoretically there is a second aircraft coming to pick up the passengers who never got out yesterday. Rumor has it however, that the second aircraft is estimating here at 8:20 PM. We shall see.....
Not surprisingly the wait turned out to be a very long one, and with very little communications from the British Airways staff the rumors we coming fast and furious every fifteen minutes. Finally we heard that there were two aircraft coming, the missing one from yesterday and todays scheduled flight. Hopes were raised that we may leave at 7:15 PM but that flight was for those scheduled for the flight scheduled for the 5th, with the exception of a lucky few who managed to talk their way on board. However. It did not register at the time but the early flight seemed to take an extremely long time before taking off.The rumor mill went into overdrive at this point with passengers phoning British Airways (BA) in London for information and snippets being doled out by the BA staff only added to the confusion. Finally on of the frantic calls to London paid off and we learned that the would not be departing until 11:40 PM. WE did board at approximately that time, BUT, given that the BA computer system was non functional we sat on the ramp until 1:46 AM while the BA ground stall tried to reconcile those passengers on the plane with those on the manifest. This almost caused a mutiny by disgruntled passengers and crew, the crew were almost out of hours, and had their hours expired we would not have been able to leave.
