On January 6th we are scheduled to leave the comfort of Solihull and hit the road again. Paul gave us a lift to the airport where we were about to have an epiphany of our own... Not all "budget airlines" are created equal! We had elected to fly to Prague (or Praha in Czech) with (Not So) Easy Jet. We had to load our bags at a separate place from everyone else - perhaps Easy Jet has something against backpacks? After loading we did the obvious thing and went for a pint. Paul proposed we have a few more (he'd flown with easy jet before) we declined as we, well I, like to get through passport control etc. and settle down before the massed hordes descend. There was a gaping flaw in this plan; it was crap. Our plane was not to be seen until well after our scheduled departure time, in fact Paul had probably been home an hour or so before the plane arrived.
When we finally boarded and were lucky enough to it beside Miss Flatulence 2003, we waited and waited and waited until the Captain (and fair play to him for this) came out and spoke to the restless would be holiday makers. He informed us that it was snowing in Prague and so we would not be able to land, instead we'd have to sit on a runway in the Midlands. So we sat and Miss Flatulence demonstrated her quite remarkable gaseous properties. Well minutes turned to hours and the oxygen supplies were running low so the skipper decided it was time to abandon ship. The flight was off. Although not off the ground.
Now, I'm a pretty fair sort of bloke and will accept that not even the Captain of an Easy Jet 737 can control the weather in central Europe, so if cancellation for the reason is necessary well, c'est la vie. What is odd though is that we were told the runways at Prague were closed due to the blizzard. If this is indeed the case I'm curious as to how planes were taking off while we were sat unable to move. Maybe the other carriers had vertical take off jets, or maybe you can take off but not land on closed runways or maybe, just maybe, we'd been BS'd to so that Easy Jet wouldn't have to cover the cost of the entire passenger body being accommodated that night as would have been the case if cancellation had been their fault. What? Cynic? Me?
Our flight was rescheduled for 06:30 the next day, but we'd have to rebook ourselves on to it or a later flight and for this privilege we had to phone Easy Jet (listen to their adverts and spend a good while on hold and naturally this was not a toll free number!) Our options were to spend the night sleeping at the airport and East Midlands Airport is not a comfortable option (no comfy chairs and lights so bright that it reminded us of that which shone through our bedroom window in Eindhoven apartment #2, as referenced in the Christmas letter) or head back to Solihull and try again the next night. We plumped for this option. A quick round of calls saw Paul pick us again, though the top of the line Jaguar in which he had taken us to the airport had been returned to his work place and so our limo home was no where near as flash. Nonetheless, cheers for that Paul - we owe you.
Still on the bright side; We did get to see Eloise again! In a few more hours we'd go in for a spot of deja vu and do a complete re run, well hopefully not a complete re run, just another trip to the airport and then on to Prague.
