We were all packed up and ready to head home for the holidays. As you might know, England received quite a load of snow a few ago--quite timely to say the least (if you wanted to be snowed-in). Not so timely for those needing to leave to country to be home for Christmas.
Very aware of the multiple flight cancellations---we stayed tuned to the BBC for updates the entire drive to Heathrow. Continued to check Air France for our flight status. Flights had been canceled up until 6AM the day of our flight--our flight was at 6:40AM.
Almost to our hotel, {since our flight left so early, Corey found a great deal online for us to have a little get-away--swim, order pizza, and jump on the hotel bed--before we flew out} Corey's phone gave a "friendly" ding. Text. It was from Air France: Flight AF1386 departing at 6:40AM has been canceled. Cue Elsie who hasn't mentioned anything about our trip until this point, "Airplane? Utah?" Not 15 minutes before, the radio talked about freeing up the second runway that evening--so we figured we were safe. We even thought about going to the airport that night just to secure everything--pieces of luggage, Spencer's ticket, etc. We were hungry, so we originally decided just go to the hotel. Well at that point, we knew we
needed to head for the airport anyway.
No Air France representative was to be found amidst all the vagabonds camped out in Terminal 4. Corey even walked right up to the check-in for a Uzbekistan flight via Charles De Gaulle (our connecting flight to SLC). No luck.
Two hours later and quite disheartened, we checked in to our hotel. Elsie was still excited and we tried to be animated {I'll admit, I was holding back tears}. We wanted pizza, but the closest take-out was a ways a way and the last thing we felt like doing was to buckle the kids into a cold car again. The luxury of room service sounded perfect. While waiting for the pizza to come, Corey called Delta to see if they could help us out. Nada. He decided to check the status of the flight just for kicks and Air France said our flight was on!!! I told Corey to refresh the page on his phone just to make sure. It was real. We were set.
Ate pizza, went swimming, jumped on the beds {no photo documentation of the latter as I was quite involved} and crashed---at 11:30pm {did we mention we needed to wake up at 2:45AM?} We had fun.
Too anxious, we woke up on our own. Corey checked the flight status again--check. We loaded the car. Woke up Miss E {poor thing} and headed out the door. Pulled up to Europcar--dead. No sign of anyone. We knew it was 3:30am, but still--shouldn't there be an all-night shuttle or something? One representative was inside Europcar's office and told us the first shuttle leaves sharply at 4:30am {apparently the airport doesn't open until 5?}. Finally, the shuttle pulled up. Within seconds we were on, but now we were waiting for the driver to wake up. He stepped into the shuttle with a coffee in one hand and rummaged for something in his bag--it was quite obvious he was in NO hurry. Corey proceeded to tell the sweet gentleman about missing a recent flight and felt it important to be to the airport as soon as possible. Corey's watch read 4:31am. Time to go. Corey finally just said, "I think we'd better go." With a thick Indian accent the driver said, "Oh, sure, sure--I was just going to wait five minutes or so for others to come....." Right. Cue the crickets---there was no one around. So we headed off.
The line at check-in was quite the wait as people were still trying to jump on any possible flight. We were fine, see--we'd had our flight booked for several months now. The Air France (AF) representative kindly started checking us in, but stopped us as she looked at Spencer's info, "You'll need to purchase an infant boarding pass," she said. We usually did this
at check-in.
I waited aside the check-in desk while Corey took Spencer to find an AF ticketing agent. No where to be found. After the run-around he finally met someone who looked important {walkie-talkies, suit and tie, etc}. With only 1 pound 50 pence left on my phone, I tried to keep my calls to Corey short. We only had 5 minutes left until check-in for our flight closed. Could this emotional roller coaster get more crazy? I couldn't wait any longer for him. I had to do something.
With persistence on my end with the lady at check-in {who phoned for a ticket--no answer} she told me to have Corey look for the AF supervisor. Minutes were running low in all sense of the phrase. Corey then went to look for the supervisor {turns out that's who he talked to}. Corey told me to try to check-in. The lady at check-in agreed and asked for the passports. Great, Corey had them. We scrambled to a meeting point and like a baton, handed the passports off. Corey went back to wait for the supervisor working on the infant ticket while with much prodding, the lady on my end proceeded to check us in. Discovering our names were not registered for the AF flight, she asked me to look on the screen. Not one of our names was posted.
Just as I felt like falling to the floor in tears, Corey came running up behind me with Spencer in hand and the supervisor behind him. The lady at check-in told the supervisor she couldn't find us on the flight. With the supervisor's strict instructions to manually enter us in, she proceeded to do so. I literally let out a, "Woo-hoo!!" Quickly and gently scolded by Corey, I was quite embarrassed--yet relieved when I heard a couple of chuckles in line. "So you're going home," a gentleman in line told me. With much relief I sighed, "Yes...yes..we're going home."
With 20 minutes left before the gate closed, we dashed through security with two kids and a stroller. Threw our laptops on the scanner. Elsie woke up in shock and tried clinging to me as I carried Spence {still in his car seat} through the scanner. Corey grabbed Elsie, strapped her in, and darted towards the gate. It's the worst looking up at the departure screen to see your gate in red flashing, "Gate Closing." I dashed after him--dropped my coat, zipper broke on my backpack {timely}, and the blankets were falling out of my arms {the ones I meant to check on last-minute}. As I reached the corridor--I realized it was going to be a LONG walk {as I'd recognized it from a previous flight}. I felt like I was running as hard as I could when I'm sure I looked like I was going for a pathetic jog. My mouth had never felt so dry. I was emotionally exhausted and physically drained. I called out to an oncoming airport staff member in a desperate plea if I ever had one, "Help! Please help!" He took Spence--then realized that might look bad so he traded Spence for my backpack {which he was now vainly trying to zip up} and went for the gate.
Wow--the relief of seeing smiling agents at the gate let me slow down and actually breathe. As we boarded the plane, Corey asked the flight attendant about Elsie's seat {as we were now all separately seated in MIDDLE seats} to which she said, "Oh, that's okay--she's old enough." She must have been thinking legally--at least we'll give her the benefit of the doubt anyway.
As we walked into the CDG Airport in Paris, we'd never felt such a sigh when we saw "Salt Lake City" on the "departures" screen. We felt even better when that flight was in the air headed directly for Utah---HOME.
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