Cowboys, Wallabies, and Kiwis

Finally.

I am finally aboard the last leg of the flight to my final destination for this here little voyage: Auckland, New Zealand. This trip began for me at 2:40pm on October 5th in Raleigh, North Carolina, and it is now 4:18pm local time on October 7th... and I am still on an airplane. No, I didn't fly for two straight days, although it does feel like it a bit. Something even stranger and more frustrating happened.

I lost October 6th completely. Just gone. *POOF* I hope I didn't have anything important going on that day.

Anyway, the first three legs of my trip were on American Airlines, who partners with Qantas to fly these routes to Australasia. Raleigh/Durham to Dallas, smooth as a baby's bottom on that MD-S80. I lounged around in the massive DFW airport for a couple of hours, waiting to catch my connection to the left coast. I was scheduled into LAX and then direct to Auckland (AKL). Window seat next to some giggly gay guy who was going to L.A. for "a conference". Fine.

So we fly on for a while... I'm not really sure how long, or what our total time en route was supposed to be. But we were flying for a while. Long enough for me to be thinking that we must be nearly to California by now. As I was looking down reading my magazine, the shadows suddenly changed, and a line of silhouettes paraded across the pages in front of me. I glanced out the window to find us making a big, sweeping left turn towards, well, Mexico. As far as I knew, there were no big, sweeping left turns towards Mexico in the flight from Dallas to L.A. Sure enough, a minute or two later, the Captain's voice came booming over the P.A. System:

"Uhhhhh folks, this is your Captain once again from the flight deck. Unfortunately, our First Officer has become ill, and we're going to be diverting to El Paso. He is fine for the time being, but he just doesn't feel 'right', so we're going to get down and get him some treatment."

Son of bitch, you have to be kidding me. This is only the second time I've been diverted in my life -- the other time was weather-related. I see the whole scene unfolding in my mind. I picture us landing on some dirt field in El Paso with a bunch of vaqueros on bareback shouting and firing guns into the air. Tumbleweeds roll down the landing strip as we touch down, running over rattlesnakes and armadillos with those giant airplane tires as a cloud of dust envelops the aircraft. It wasn't quite that bad, but it was indeed a tiny little airport in the middle of nowhere. It was the middle of the evening, yet the cafes and shops inside the so-called "terminal" were all closed. Welcome to El Paso.

As I sat there shaking my head, I ran through the whole scenario in my brain. The FAA requires that all commercial flights be overseen by two capable pilots, so we couldn't just go on with the Captain only. If we had been able to make it to a hub city -- like Phoenix -- it's likely we would have been down and back up in the air in very short order. But when something like this happens in the boondocks, they have to find another First Officer who is available somewhere in the country and then fly him in before he can get to work. To complicate things further, the flight crew is only permitted by law to work a certain number of hours in a day. This being the last leg of their workday, all of them were drawing dangerously close to the cutoff for getting airborne. If we couldn't get our First Officer in time, the flight would be grounded for the night.

Finally, after almost four hours, our man arrived, and we had our full flight crew ready to go. Time to do some math. It was about 8:30pm local time when we got the wheels up from border-town, making it 7:30pm in L.A. My connection to Auckland left at 9:05pm, giving me 1:35 to make it there. Total flight time for this leg: 1:55. That's not good. So I crossed my fingers and willed the pilot to shove those throttles forward right to the stops.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally descended towards L.A., with me checking my watch every minute or so. It was 9:35 by the time we hit the ground. I noticed a beautiful Qantas 747 being pushed back from the gate as we approached the one adjacent, and I couldn't help but wonder if that was my New Zealand flight rolling out of reach. I bolted off the plane and grabbed the first airline rep I saw.

"Did New Zealand leave yet?!"

"Yes, that flight's just gone."

Son of bitch, again. I knew that was going to happen. In fact, I knew it was going to happen so surely that I had already been in touch with the airline while I was sitting in the El Paso International Shanty/Airport. I already had a flight lined up in case I missed the connection. It was less than ideal though. The next flight direct to Auckland was 24 hours away, the same flight I had missed today. They were able to get me to Auckland only 12 hours late, but I had to fly over New Zealand to Sydney, Australia first. Then, after a three-hour layover, I had to grab another three-hour flight to Auckland.

In total, it's going to end up costing me and extra 12 hours of travel time, seven of which are spent on a plane. Joy.

Finally though, we are descending over the Tasman Sea and should be arriving in Auckland shortly. If the weather holds out, that is. Shit looks nasty up in front of us, and we're bouncing around like the sky is made of rubber.

I bet you a week's paycheck that my luggage is not on this plane with me.