On New Year’s Eve 1999, we flew home to Seattle from Florida. According to our scheduled flight times, we would arrive in Seattle by 8 pm well ahead of the New Year.
Our first layover was in Houston. At the airport the televisions were showing the millennial celebrations as they happened around the world. Our seats were upgraded to first class. Being a newbie to flying, I had never flown first class before. It was much more pleasant than the cramped economy class seats and the food was actually identifiable. There was wine. There were heated towels. It was pretty nice.
However, the plane was rerouted to Denver because of mechanical trouble. So we sat on the runway while the mechanics fixed the problems. We had comfy seats. Others did not. Some of the other passengers were more restless. I remember one man wanting to exit the plane for a cigarette, but the flight attendants could not let him off the plane.
Eventually we were on our way again, but the delay meant we would miss our last flight from Portland to Seattle. The airline would transfer us to the next and last flight of the day.
When we arrived in Portland, we had just a few minutes to run from our gate to the departing gate. As you can imagine our luggage didn’t make it. (Once again, my underwear probably had a classier ride than I did.) We stepped onto the plane which was little more than a puddle-jumper. I don’t think there were more than thirty people including the flight crew.
The flight attendants were wearing 2000 glasses and pouring champagne for all the passengers. It was a quick, but loud flight–not because of rowdy passengers, the propellers were noisy.
Angela Schroeder
Patricia Kiyono
Elaine Cantrell
Jeff Salter
Joselyn
Tonette Joyce
Four Foxes, One Hound 
I’ve had my share of plane troubles, but only one unusual airport experience on a holiday, and that was also on a New Year’s Eve. I wasn’t the one traveling, except to and from the airport, which was not fun in bad weather.
Glad everyone was safe>I would avoid traveling on holidays if at all possible.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I don’t like crowds and I don’t think I could handle traveling by mass transit on a holiday.
LikeLiked by 1 person
love the line about your underwear having a better trip — classic.
Sounds like the kind of obstacles that would drive me nuts, but it sounds as though you took it all in good grace.
My wife once (with an infant) had a BUS trip rather like your excursion… though not the same geography and much lower altitude.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I can’t imagine traveling on a bus with an infant. When we flew with the twins, at least, we knew the flights were only about 2 hours.
LikeLiked by 2 people
my wife had a lot of courage and faith
LikeLiked by 1 person
It always seems that the more you want to get somewhere, the more problems you have getting there. Sorry you had such an irritating experience! At least you didn’t have three little ones to add to your traveling woes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pingback: A Hop, Skip, and a Jump | Joselyn Vaughn
Sounds like a hectic evening. It was nice of them to upgrade you to first class. I have heard people say they don’t care for smaller planes because you feel more turbulence. I hope that wasn’t the case for you especially with the champagne flowing. 😉
LikeLike
Ha. I never knew you lived in Seattle. You win for spending the worst New Year’s Eve, I’d say. I remember all the big buzz about how the computers would crash and the banks would go bust when the clock hit midnight and jolted us into 2000. But I don’t remember how or if we celebrated the new year. But so far, nearly 17 years into this new century, time keeps marching on and the computers are even better! Knock on wood…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Our computers were fine, but our milk was not Y2K compliant.
LikeLike