Father's Daze

Thanks to Queen Elizabeth II, Terry and I were held prisoner in Newark Liberty Airport for four hours and forced to spend a night in an airport motel in Detroit.

It was almost enough to make us want to stage a second revolution, if only the first one hadn’t been so successful 134 years and two days before.

It all started when we headed out east for our nephew’s wedding in New Hampshire and the celebration/party two days later in my old hometown in New York state.

When it came time to head back home, we were scheduled out of Newark at 4:11 p.m. Tuesday, with a connecting flight from Detroit to Milwaukee at 8 p.m.

We arrived at our gate shortly after 3 p.m. to find that the departure time for our flight was now posted as 5:05 p.m. We were in time to hear the gate attendant announce the reason why.

It seems that the plane we were scheduled to fly out on had been diverted from its arrival at Newark to Kennedy Airport, way over on the other side of the metropolitan area. According to the announcement, this was because Queen Elizabeth was in the New York area that day to address the United Nations.

Never mind that every flight in the airport — at least the ones on our concourse — seemed to be coming in and out of Newark without any diversions or delays, or that by that time of day, the queen and her party should have been on the ground and well out of the air space over the New York metropolitan area.

The attendant said that as soon as the plane was cleared to leave Kennedy and come to Newark, they would get us all on our way. In the meantime, she invited everyone who had connections beyond Detroit to check at the gate about the status of their connections.

That immediately resulted in a line that stretched back halfway across the concourse — a line that I found myself nearly at the end of. Apparently, there were very few people who were just going to Detroit — probably for good reasons.

While I waited patiently — albeit with a limited supply of patience — on line, Terry checked with an attendant at the next gate, who said our plane should be able to leave Kennedy by 5 and be at Newark by 5:30, and thus able to leave in plenty of time to make our connection.

That soon proved to be a false promise, as the departure time for our flight changed to 5:30 p.m. while the line inched forward at about the same speed as a glacier.

That soon proved to just as ephemeral. By the time I got to speak to the gate attendant, our departure time had changed to 6 p.m., which was now only a quarter of an hour away.

The attendant conceded that, unless the airline suddenly found a supersonic jet to put us on for the flight to Detroit, we weren’t going to make our connection to Milwaukee.

She checked on other possible connections, only to determine that any flights through Atlanta were all booked. There was a connection through Cincinnati, she said, but then added that the flight had left at 5:30 p.m. — which it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out was 15 minutes prior to when I was talking to her. She did say she would leave us booked on our 8 p.m. flight out of Detroit, just in case, but also booked us on the next flight out of Detroit — at 8:50 a.m., Wednesday.

That left us to hope for a sudden quick ice storm in Detroit that would ground all flights there that night for at least two hours — except for the fact that there was still no plane at our gate for us to fly to Detroit on.

By this time, there was a plane at our gate going to Detroit — the next scheduled Newark-Detroit flight on this airline, but apparently there was no room on that flight for us.

That plane took off as scheduled at 6:30 p.m., leaving an increasingly anglophobic group of Newark captives still sitting in the airport.

It was about this time that the gate attendant announced that our plane was finally leaving Kennedy Airport and should be at Newark shortly. She said that after the passengers on the plane exited — apparently, they had been held captive at Kennedy for all that time as well — they would give the plane a quick cleaning and get us on our way to Detroit around 7 p.m. or so.

At this point, we were greeting any promises with more than a modicum of skepticism, but sure enough the plane arrived, the passengers got off, and about 15 minutes later those of us captives who hadn’t been able to make other connections or who were just trying to get to Detroit got to board the plane.

There were few enough of us left that we each could probably have claimed an entire row to ourselves. We pulled away from the gate and onto the tarmac, thinking our ordeal was finally over, but no such luck.

After sitting there for about 15 minutes going nowhere — or at least no further toward Detroit — the captain came on to tell us he was sorry, but there was a problem with the plane and he had to return to the gate so the mechanics could check it out.

Naturally, when we got to the gate, the pilot told us he was sorry, but they had determined the problem couldn’t be fixed immediately and we would all have to get off the plane. There was another flight to Detroit two gates over that we would be able to be able to fly in, he did add.

What he didn’t add was that, by this time, we could have been halfway to Detroit just by walking. This plane was also about one-third full. A cynical person might have thought they made up the mechanical problem with our first plane just so they could cancel that flight, let all of us fill up the next flight and save the cost of flying a plane to Detroit, but I really don’t think they’d do that. And if you believe that, I’ve got a ticket on a supersonic flight from Newark to Detroit to sell you.

We finally got to Detroit about 10:30 at night.

Since our flight to Milwaukee hadn’t been delayed three hours, we went right to the ticket agent to see what the airline was going to do for us — hopefully more than just give us a pillow and a blanket and point us to the nearest bench to sleep on until our morning flight.

They gave us a voucher for a free night at an airport hotel, meal vouchers for dinner and breakfast, and $50 each off our next flight on their airline — as if we’d ever want to fly that airline again.

We got to the motel about 11:30 p.m. to find that room service ended at 10 p.m. and the dining room closed at 11 p.m. Fortunately, they’d kept the dining room open for all of us freed Newark captives, but there was only one waiter left to serve all of us.

We finally staggered off to bed a little after midnight, with a 7 a.m. shuttle bus to the airport to catch our flight ahead of us.

After all that, you’ll pardon me if I don’t join in singing “God Save the Queen” any time soon. NEXT WEEK: We had a good time before running afoul of the queen.