[Magdalen] air transport snarl

[Michael Bishop]

I am glad that she is not travelling through Europe today. According to 
the BBC, "Up to half of all European flights could suffer delay due to a 
failure in one of the systems used to manage air traffic.
Eurocontrol whichco-ordinatesflights across the continent said almost 
15,000scheduled trips"could have some delay"

God bless

.....
.....
Michael Bishop
rev at michaelbishop.name


> On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 2:19 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
> oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My beloved spouse was on a trip to India and Nepal, and was coming home on
>> Saturday. I wasn't sure what time.
>> I got a call on my cell. She was stuck in Dubai. The plane out of India was
>> a couple hours late, and they missed their Dubai connection. The Emirates
>> (NB!) Airlines folks had plenty of warning that this was happening and made
>> absolutely no effort to prepare for the glut of passengers lining up to
>> re-book.
>> It appears that for reasons not clear, Christine's bag never got loaded
>> onto the plane in India to begin with, so she arrived home with just her
>> back pack. Fortunately, everything essential was on her person. She tries
>> to do this all the time, and she had a premonition her bag would get lost.
>> At the baggage problems desk, the person there was from another airline and
>> said that, yes a person from Emirates Airline ought to be there. He was
>> nice enough to take down her information.
>> I had to call the limo service's emergency line and explain that my wife
>> had missed her plane, so she would not be at the airport at the scheduled
>> time. I gave him the new info, and he said he would "figure something out."
>> A couple minutes later he called me back to say that the information my
>> wife gave me could not possibly be accurate, and could I see what was going
>> on?
>> I spent a lot of time looking at airplane schedules, and left messages on
>> my beloved's cell. She has a hearing deficit, and generally does not hear
>> her phone unless she happens to be in just the right situation. Worries!
>> After a while she called me, saying she saw I tried to call her, so we
>> chatted. It turned out that the slip of paper the airlines gave her for her
>> re-booking was a confusing mess, and she had copied some irrelevant number
>> instead of her flight number. I got this info to the limo man, and he said,
>> "We will be there." What a soldier!
>> Her plane landed in Milan to refuel, and they had all passengers deplane
>> into the airport's secure area, and then they all had to be vetted again,
>> even though they were all in a the security zone of the airport and never
>> left it. They take security very seriously. Better some annoyance now than
>> a phone call that somewhere over the Atlantic some internal explosion
>> turned your sweetie's airplane into a bunch of spare parts.
>> She finally got home about midnite easter eve (missed the vigil) and we
>> chatted for a bit and retired (we're already retired, but you KWIM).
>> After some phone calling some people said they would do what they could to
>> locate her bag. Later I got a text saying they had SUCCESS! and her bag
>> would shortly be back to her.
>> About 9 PM easter, got a phone call that her bag would arrive around 12.30
>> to 1.30 -- and should they just leave it somewhere rather than awakening
>> us.
>> We assured him we would be up.
>> By about 3AM I called the number back to ask where the delivery person was.
>> The phone got answered, which I thought was a good sign. The person
>> answering was on top of the situation and asked me to hold for a moment. He
>> then told me the driver was about 45 minutes out. He wanted to know again
>> if we wanted them to just leave the bag, and we said no. Call us when he
>> gets there.
>> In the fullness of time (I just love writing that phrase) the truck
>> arrived, and we got my sweetie's bag. Its locks had been cut off, but it
>> appeared (the next day) that nothing was missing. Customs probably cut the
>> locks.
>> I decided to skip Easter morning service too, and just recuperate.
>>
>> But -- (or "Butt" -- as Deb Bly used to write) all was not lost. We were
>> able to stay awake to watch the Jesus Christ Super Star on the telly. I in
>> general enjoyed the production, although the subordinate voice parts were
>> not as good as they were in other productions I've heard, and there's lots
>> of room for some moving special moments, like Pilate's vision, recalled
>> with incredible dread, of "Thousands of millions crying for this man, and
>> then I heard them mentioning my name -- and leaving me the blame."
>>
>> It's quite effective how a small number of themes are used in different
>> ways throughout the work, giving it a sort of cohesiveness that one does
>> not appreciate until it is heard a few times.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
>> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
>> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>>