It begins

August 22, 1:30pm.
Scenario: You’re off to a country you’ve wanted to visit your entire life, and you’ve been preparing to go for six months. The day of your flight arrives. You wake up early, eat a solid breakfast, do some last-minute packing and weigh your suitcases. You eat a quick lunch at 1, figuring if you leave in about 10 minutes you can get to the airport with ample time to spare before your 4pm flight.

Then you get the call. The mechanical female voice on the other end does nothing to calm your nerves as you learn that your flight, a mere 4 hours from its departure, has been canceled! Hooray!

There was a flight available from Baltimore that I could still catch, so my family drove up there. Alright, no problem. Just a minor glitch.

7:30pm: So this is actually turning out to be a lot more like Lost than I expected….
The plane was supposed to leave Baltimore at 5:50, but after a long wait they told us it would leave Baltimore at 9:50 instead. My flight to Cairo leaves JFK at 9:55. يا خبر أسود!
So the ticket counter told us to go to the help phones and get someone to rebook us somewhere else. All you have to do is ask them how to get a flight to JFK and not miss the connection. Easy enough, right?

NOT IF THEY THINK YOUR PLANE IS ALREADY IN THE AIR.

I kid you not. Here’s my conversation with the flight coordinator:
Me: My flight, **** to JFK is delayed to 9:50 and I want to get another flight since I have to be on the plane to Cairo in four hours.
F: Hmm. It says your flight to JFK is on time. You should do your best to catch it.
Me: I am at the gate. They say it’s delayed.
(We discuss options)
Me: Maybe I’ll just take this flight and hope for the best. I have to wait a few hours though. Do you know when the plane will get here?
F: Well, there must be something wrong with the computers…here it says your flight is leaving at 5:50…I think you’re about to miss your flight.
Clearly no help there. So I go to the ticket counter. People behind me are wondering why there’s all this disconnect between the ticket counter and the flight coordinator crew, because they had the exact same problem I just did.
Guy: How do they not know where this plane is?!
Ticket lady: Sir, it’s actually right outside.
(cue Twilight Zone music)

I sense Widmore’s hand in this…



8pm: Waiting in line to get my ticket issues cleared up, I met an Israeli who’s moving back to Israel after 2 years in the US. His mother just happened to be Egyptian, funny. Also helped a Spanish-speaking woman who didn’t speak much English get her ticket. Aside from the strangely large number of passengers going to Vegas, we both decided to take a gamble and try making our connecting flights at JFK.



9:20pm: The plane left BWI in clear, sunny weather. Ran into some unfortunate turbulence, but only half the seats were filled. If only we’d left earlier…I resigned myself to waiting in JFK for a day and getting the next flight out. The flight itself took 30 minutes. While we were taxiing at JFK I learned that my flight to Cairo was delayed until 10:30. Great news! Except when I checked my watch and realized it was 10:25.

10:30: Still taxiing.

10:40: Still taxiing.

10:50: We stopped at the gate. Flight is now boarding at 11:00. I charged through the terminal at top speed. JFK terminals suck. Especially the U-shaped ones when you start out at one end and have to get to the other in about five minutes.

11PM: ON THE PLANE TO CAIRO! What a miracle