My travel back to Dublin was a bit of a disaster. The Mountain Perks shuttle was great, getting me to the airport in Calgary a half an hour early, so I had checked in and got rid of my bags a full three hours before my flight. Anticipating airline food, I filled up at the marginally less crap airport food court, bought myself some books and settled into the waiting game.
My flight was due to depart at 1755, but nothing much seemed to be happening at the gate. I was engrossed in my book – Heat by George Monbiot, well worth a read – so I didn’t really hear the explanations… something about cleaning the plane I thought. An hour after we were due to take off we were informed that the plane needed to be taken out of service and they were flying in a replacement from Vancouver, so we’d have to wait another four hours for that to arrive. Great!
While waiting, I finished my book and then realised I hadn’t heard any new announcements about when the rescheduled flight was due to depart, so I had to go looking for someone to fill me in. We finally got going only six hours later than scheduled.
On arriving in Heathrow, the Air Canada representative gave me the details of my rebooked flight to Dublin, so I tried texting Dad the updated arrival time. My Canadian SIM wouldn’t work, and both my Australian and Irish ones didn’t have any credit, so I tried getting online via WiFi. Turns out Heathrow doesn’t have any free WiFi hotspots, or at least none where I was at the time. As luck would have it, I tried to make a reverse charge call – which didn’t work – and as I replaced the receiver a pound fell out of the coin return which I was able to use to place a quick call.
Once I’d made it to the required gate I found out that the flight to Dublin was delayed, so I enjoyed another few hours sitting on my arse. I finally got airborne and arrived in Dublin only 29 hours after leaving my house in Fernie, and only 7 hours later than scheduled! The annoying thing was I arrived after dark, so didn’t get to see Dublin from the air on approach, something which always makes me feel like I’m coming home.