The Terminal Trek
My family and I are English, living in the States. We were going to fly back one Christmas to visit England. Our flights were, Cincinnati to Atlanta (9-hour layover), Atlanta to Amsterdam (2-hour layover), and Amsterdam to Manchester.
Well, the first leg of the journey was fine. The layover in Atlanta, however, is when things went wrong. We were waiting at our gate, which was at the very end of the mile-long terminal.
About seven hours into our layover, an announcement comes over the intercom telling us that our flight has been moved to the other end of the terminal. No big deal. We get up and move all of our stuff to the other gate which took us about 15 minutes of walking to get to the other end.
We settle in for our next two hours. Well, another announcement comes over the intercom, telling us that our plane is delayed by another hour. This stinks. Oh well. Anyway, the plane arrives, we all board, strap in and are ready to go. We wait to depart. And wait, and wait…
Until a flight attendant makes an announcement that there is an “electrical leak” in our plane, so we all need to get off. So we de-plane, and get some meal vouchers for the inconvenience, and are then told that our substitute plane will be arriving in an hour. At our original gate.
So it’s another trek across the terminal for us. We stop at the food court for the third time during our stay, get some terrible food and sit down to eat. Five minutes later, another announcement comes over and tells us that our plane is now boarding!
So we book it to the other end of the terminal and make it onto our plane just in time. Thirteen hours later we arrive in Manchester and collect our luggage. It’s soaking wet. There had been a storm in Atlanta during our layover, and the crew had just left everyone’s bags on the tarmac.
This stunk, not only because our clothes got wet, but so did all of our presents for our family. Story credit: Reddit / (Rash_Of_Bacon)