When Did We Stop Applauding?

The fog-enshrouded island of Jersey caused some personal travel mayhem this week but to be honest, this was the first time in several hundred flights that I've ever had a flight cancelled after boarding so I can't complain - it comes with the territory and I've been very lucky thus far.

It's interesting how much travel contributes to escapades and interesting anecdotes, especially when plans go awry and I'm grateful for the fairly regular font of stories to relate. Lightly Green wouldn't be much of a blog without these moments of discomfort!

Gifted with a month's work in Jersey it was with a song in my heart and a smile on my face that I carefully planned travel to and from the island to include some sightseeing days either side of my work assignment. 

Every decent adventure commences with getting up before many people have gone to bed and this one was true to form; I got up just after 4am to be ready for the 5am shuttle to Gatwick. When one refers to the speed and convenience of air travel, very rarely does one take into account the extraordinary amount of time we build in to get to the airport and present ourselves through check-in and security etc which the airlines insist on and which add an additional 2 hours onto a 45-minute flight. Hey ho, part of the package, right?

Swiss watchmakers would have been proud of the smooth transfer from bed to departure gate, most of which was undertaken with my eyes closed - it was bloody early in the morning! Neatly deposited in my window seat, with an empty one alongside, life was perfectly on track.

Not.

At 7am, when we should have been pushing back from the gate, the captain made the first of many announcements in his melodious Irish voice. "Ladies and gentlemen, I apologise for the late departure but fog in Jersey is preventing flights from landing. I'm going to wait for an hour and see if things improve as I'd like to give it a shot and get you there."

Fair enough, I have a whole 24 hours before signing on at work. What's an hour between friends? 

At 8.30, our captain appeared in the cabin and updated us. The fog was getting worse, the weather prediction not good but a British Airways flight had just taken off and our clever (and delightful to both look at and listen to) captain was going to wait and see if the BA flight managed to land and if so, would take a crack at it himself. He had secured a takeoff slot for 9am should things go our way.

Gatwick at 7h10 

When Captain Cute returned at 10 to say we were out of luck, the BA flight was still circling Jersey Airport and our flight officially cancelled it wasn't really surprising, I'd been following the action on Live Flight Tracker. My work colleague was on the BA flight and I was interested in seeing whether she got there first!

No, she didn't. Two hours later, both of us back in the Gatwick terminal and booked on the evening flights, we met up and calmly chuckled about it all over coffee before deciding this called for gin and tonics! The day sped past and at 5pm we headed off back to bag drop and our respective boarding gates, filling the WhatsApp waves with shared news about how far down the line we were getting - through the gate. On board. Seat belts. Could we? Are we? Will we?

The captain on my new flight came through into the cabin and filled us in. Fog was still hogging the runway in Jersey and while he was going to give it a go and had loaded extra fuel, it wasn't looking very good but we were going anyway. 

Less than 45 minutes later the lights of Jersey airport glimmered below, along with strands of fog. 'Bang'! We were down, albeit a bit skew and skittering along from side to side down the runway. A hard landing which the captain had managed under difficult circumstances, bless him for getting us to our destination.

A desultory few hands tried to clap then petered out in embarrassment. Ah, I remember years ago when EVERY landing received a good round of applause from admiring and appreciative passengers. When did we become so blase about the miracle of heaving tonnes of people and baggage across land and water that we decided landing this juggernaut, with us aboard, wasn't worth the energy of a polite clap? 

Shame on us for rewarding golfers, tennis players and the cricket team with a smattering of enthusiastic applause when they connect with a ball, yet two pilots, using their skills and immense coolness under appalling weather conditions, deliver us safely to our destination without any acknowledgement of appreciation from the people who had put their lives into the care of the pilots. 

As for me, minus several critical hours of sleep and the treasured sightseeing day, it's all part and parcel of accepting the rough with the smooth and I got a fair bit of mileage out of "I've shown my passport twice and didn't get further than gate 55E!" uttered to Easyjet staff and fellow passengers in the lengthy queue. Making people chuckle at my weary riposte gave me a much-needed burst of energy too.