After what was already a tiring week I was really looking forward to getting home and trying to catch some zz's on the plane. I got to the airport bright and early and did some work on the laptop with the free wireless and finished the working part of the day. Great so now to get on the plane, have a glass of champagne and a white wine or two before putting my head down for the night.
When I got to the gate and the crew were waiting there I knew we were going to be late but MAS is not all that punctual in my experience so I can deal with that. We eventually boarded and then sat for quite a while still at the gate. I managed to finish on newspaper and at that point when we pushed back we were an hour and a half late. Bummer beginning to eat into the weekend.
We taxied out and sat in a queue as the weather was ordinary so another delay before finally the pilot turns on to a runway and guns the throttles. This lasted all of 15 seconds before he cut power and hit the brakes. Looking out a few of us noticed that the landing lights on the runway were red. The bloody pilot just tried to take off in the wrong direction ! Control tower must have told him to abort and we taxied off to a corner of the airfield where he tried to say there was some confusion about the runway and they had allocated us another one. Bloody confusion all right and I wondered if the guy was lightheaded due to fasting.
In the end they would not let us take off and we taxied to a remote gate and sat for another hour. By this time the crew ran out of hours so we had to get offloaded and at that point I knew I wasn't getting home on Saturday *sigh* The ground staff were in chaos with only one MAS representative and the rest Turkish with the two not being able to fully understand each other. We got herded about and they took our passports which was very unsettling before plonking us in the lounge for another couple of hours.
Eventually we got put in a Hotel nearby but by this time it was 10pm and we had not even had dinner. Most of the passengers had no change of clothes but at least I was travelling with my on-board as usual so had a clean shirt and underwear left. I eventually only got home at 2 am and could not sleep due to the time difference so I slept until 1 pm which is unbelievable for me and missed church *sniff*
If you think travelling for work is glamorous well at times it is but I can tell you most of the time it is inconvenient and stress inducing. This last trip was a doozy......
take off on the wrong runway? now that's a first...reminds me of American football players running towards their own half(!)...but am glad you're okay and all's well that ends well...in today's world, this merits a huge sigh of relief and thanksgiving, no? :)
Posted by: alwyn | October 03, 2006 at 01:18 AM