I thought one hour of sleep prior to taking off for South Korea would be sufficient so I could sleep on the fourteen hour flight from Dallas (RDU >> Dallas >> Seoul). It was not. Prepare yourself, I’ve got a story to tell.
October 9th, get to Raleigh-Durham (RDU) airport at 4:30 am. The flight to Dallas was supposed to be about three hours. Will said “pretty sure we both have middle seats and I’m one row in front of you.” At which point, I decide to spite the system for inventing middle seats, and being sleep-deprivedly sorry to my near-future seat mates, I ate plain cream cheese, tomato, and an ONION on a bagel. We left at 7:30 a.m. and to my delighted surprise, I have an aisle seat. Remember this seating arrangement because it’ll be important.
Lacking sleep plus introverted plus airsick, I was sat next to two bozos who wouldn’t stop talking to me. Thinking that this was less than ideal, my true waking nightmare began at 10:51 a.m.
During the flight, our pilot was forced to land in Little Rock, Arkansas because there was a tornado around the Dallas airport. The airport wasn’t receiving planes, or sending. We were kept on the plane the entire time, no option of deplaning unless you decided to end your trip in Arkansas. (This is illegal as I learned later.) So we were trapped in a plane on the tarmac for 2.5 hours. Hot, restless, couped up, cramped legs – you know the drill of Economy flight seating.
Checking American Airline’s flight statuses online informed us that our flight to Seoul was delayed as well. Very angry, but no one to blame besides the weather. My anger felt trapped inside, and the flushed faces with furrowed eyebrows of neighboring passengers showed the same feeling. My texts to friends on the situation was filled with so much rage because I felt I had no other way to release the intense emotions. Trapped on a plane, my least preferred mode of transportation, I wanted to scream. Belt light pinged on. Finally! And we leave the Arkansas runway by 1:18 p.m.
The pilot forecast the flight would take one hour and some minutes. As a sidenote, it should only take thirty minutes from Little Rock to Dallas on a normal day, but it took us two hours and thirty minutes. We had to go a strange route around the storm which went like this: Up through Missouri and down through Oklahoma. But wait, there’s more! We were holding in South Oklahoma for awhile waiting to be given the clear to land on the Dallas airway. Landed in Dallas at 3:47 p.m. by which point our Seoul flight had departed an hour earlier. Raining like a monsoon outside. We went through a large amount of turbulence.
By 4 p.m., we were told that the reason we hadn’t pulled forward into the parking dock was because, a strike of lightning had just hit right in front of the airplane so they evacuated the ramp workers for safety evaluations. At which point my friend texted a reply stating, “Oh my god, this is like every traveler’s worst nightmare.” You don’t have to tell me twice.
Half an hour later, we’re off the plane and waiting in a stifling environment where the Customer Service line had at least two hundred people in front of us. Two hours later, we are at the counter. True to what online told us hours ago, there are no flights to Seoul via American Airlines (or other airlines) until Thursday which had the downside of being deposited in South Korea by Friday. This would leave us 3.5 days to fulfill my list of sightings and doings in my dream destination. Compared to 10 days, we simply couldn’t justify the limited timeline so decided to cancel. I was devastated because I knew that it would be so long before we could travel again due to financial situations.
We book a “complimentary” trip back to RDU that departs at 9 p.m. In light of all the despair, we enjoy a nice dinner and I order a much needed boozy drink. We dally at our gate for the next few hours, and with our incredible luck, it gets delayed an hour. By this point, I’m sure you’re thinking, “what a nightmare.” But wait, wait, there’s more! A fresh new hysteria unfolds: Minutes before 10 p.m., I turn to Will saying, “Hey, ticket says ‘Gate 35.’ We’re at 36, let’s just move over one.” So we move, but the screen for Gate 35 tells us it’s going to O’Hare. Odd. Confusedly we ask the attendant at the counter. He says, “It has been changed to Gate 4.”
GATE 4?!
Panic! We are literally sprinting from one end of the airport to the other. I couldn’t keep up with Will. I waved him on when he looked back. I ran, walked, intermittently as fast as I could. My throat was burning. I felt faint. And we get to Gate 4 just in breathless time as the last 10 people are boarding. Thanks Dallas airport. You’ve been a delight.
P.S. The original aisle seat was the best thing to happen to me.
P.P.S. Our bags were still in Dallas when we got back to RDU.
See here, the Vagabond For Honey 