Wonders of the American West
Day Eleven – Las-Vegas to home
Weather: 36, sunny in Las Vegas – 6, foggy in St. John’s
I woke and immediately checked my flight for the day. Delayed a bit over an hour.
Okay. No problem. I had planned to leave the hotel at ten for the 12:45 flight and would only leave at eleven.
A “House” marathon helped pass the last bit of time. It would have been too hot to wander the streets in what I wear on an airplane. I had no trouble having my voucher accepted by the taxi even though he kept reading it en route to the airport. I got to the airport and through security in less than twenty minutes.
McCarren was a small airport. At least, the International departure area was small. I got in, took five minutes to figure out where my gate was and where I could eat. Then I checked the boards.
My flight was delayed to 5:50 pm
Almost seven hours.
Why I didn’t turn around and go shopping at some mall, I’ll never know. Probably cause there was disagreement between the boards, the online time and the time listed at the gate. By the time we learned what was going on, there was no sense in leaving.
Turned out the plane scheduled for us had mechanical problems and was delayed that first hour and a bit. It got in fine, but the delay meant the crew had timed-out, so they had to get another crew to fly us back. They had to bring them in from Calgary.
Which was pretty good. To round up a crew and get them to LV in a matter of hours. I didn’t mind the wait so much. I had a computer full of movies and a lot of photos to sort through.
Air Canada gave us all vouchers for meals at the airport – $20 each. That got me a meal at Burger King and some snacks for the flight. They also assured us that those of us with a connection would be given a hotel for the night and the first flight out the next day.
At first, I wasn’t sure it would work well for me as the first flight out was at seven and it wouldn’t be worthwhile going to a hotel for the sake of 3 or 4 hours. As it turned out, I was given a room and a 1-800 number to call to arrange my flight for the next day – any flight I wanted that was available. I picked a 11:45 am flight so that I could sleep in.
The flight to TO was very bumpy as we flew over thunderstorms – including a big lurch down to our right. It was labeled as “moderate” turbulence and it got to the point that people asked about it and the pilot came on to say it was like driving over a road with potholes and that there was nothing to worry about.
A good indicator to know if there is something to worry about is to watch the flight attendants. If they don’t look worried, nothing is out of the range of normal.
We got into TO by one in the morning and we were met by agents at the end of gangway with our hotel vouchers and the 1-800 number. I got to my hotel by 2:30 and was out by three…which was midnight in LV, so it kinda worked out.
I was back at the airport by 10:30 the next morning and I wondered if fog at home would get us detoured to Halifax. Luckily, the fog cleared just before we got in.
All in all, it took me less time to fly to China.
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