Vacation - The Flight

What is nicer than two weeks spent in Florida while Germany is opening the doors for winter, snow and ice. You just board a plane and after some nine hours you have crossed the ocean and landed in New York. One and a half hours later you take off to Florida. Easy. That was the plan. After eight hours over the Atlantic Ocean it started with a circle on the screen. This circle was not exactly what we expected because it represented our flight line. A circle is far from a line and we were informed that because of bad weather conditions the Kenedy Airport (NY) had closed one of two lanes, everything was delayed. But since every flight was delayed the same would happen to our connection flights, we shouldn't be worried at all. We started worrying when the pilot said that the airport had been closed down for change of lanes. We were furthermore worried when we were informed that the airport had been opened again but because of our low level of fuel we had to land now or be redirected to another airport. Fortunately we were allowed to land. 200 metres from the gate the plane stopped. We were told that because of little space the plane had to be carried in by a carrier into the gate. Ten minutes later we were headed for the gate. Another two minutes later the captain told us that the engine of the carrier had broken down and we had to wait for an exchange carrier. It was exactly at that moment that I felt histerical for the first time on the flight.
J

Who would have thought that after having travelled for almost 24 hours we would actually get settled that fast here in Florida.
Yes, it took us a mere twentyfour hours to get from our door in Berlin to our friends house in Fort Lauderdale - due to the fact that we went through JKF and that they had closed that airport for like thirty minutes due to bad weather thus a bazillion flights in and out of JFK were delayed. We kind of like HAD to land due to the fact that the flight took longer than usual in the first place due to very heavy head winds and we were almost out of kerosene when we finally were cleared to land. Needless to say that one flight out of New York was not delayed - our connection to Fort Lauderdale. In fact they started earlier. A lot of energy and a lot of I WAS HERE FIRST made it possible that Jens and I were in front of everyone else in line of rebooking our ticket, and we did manage to get on a plane to Atlanta to connect to Fort Lauderdale, even though that last flight was sold out and overbooked we still managed to get on the plane and land in Fort Lauderdale at 1240am - some six hours later then we should have and well less one suitcase, Jens' suitcase vanished. Well not completey they found it Sunday afternoon but not before our American Express Travel Insurance kicked in and we were allowed to go shopping for 600 Euro in clothes and bath room necessities. :-)
T