Inbound Evil Santa

After the previous delay we thought it wise to be ahead of the game and check whether our return flight on New Year's eve wasn't delayed. Usually, this would be a simple task however, after problems contacting me before I left BKK, D had called Shanghai airport to confirm arrival of my flight and was told that without a doubt, positively that we were going to arrive in Shanghai at 11pm. In fact we left at 11pm. Poor D spent four hours in beautiful Shanghai airport with nothing to do. We approached the task with a certain amount of scepticism and it really didn't provide us with any kind of preparation for what was to come.

We thought it would be kind of cool to be in the air at midnight. Long gone are the days when I get all excited about what I'm going to do for NY, it is nigh on impossible to have all the people I want together in the same room. Will have to wait till I am a millionaire and can swing by the various countries to pick you all up in my private jet for the party of the century. But where exactly would we do NY?

Fantasy land aside, let's return to the dismal reality that was my NY. We arrived at
Pudong airport at 7pm for the 10 o'clock flight and weren't shocked to see it was delayed. In fact, thought it was positive that it was actually on the board and therefore, to all intents and purposes, existed. It was delayed until 1am. Again, noone was there at check-in so we went to the only, yes only restaurant in this huge architectural masterpiece of an airport, for an overpriced but nice dinner. We eventually checked-in at 11 and everything was closed the other side. This is normal in China. When we went to the museum it shut at 5. at 4.50 the guards chucked us out of the room we were in and promptly pulled down the iron shutters and the entire building was locked down by 4.49.

We had nothing to do but wait. And wait we did freezing our tits off at our gate. We got a gate change at some point and I tried to bed down and get some rest. Was prodded at around 12.30 by J with a rather dreary Happy NY and that was it. Then they announced that we wouldn't actually be leaving at 1am as the plane wasn't at the airport yet. We were the only people in the damn place. Felt kind of eerie. We finally started to board at around 3am. I was so happy to be on the plane.

As we took off I noticed the smell of petrol but put it to the back of my mind, was so tired and just wanted to get going that I couldn't have cared less. We had been in the air about 10 mins when the plane started to lose height rapidly. This concerned me a little more. 10 mins later the pilot was announcing that there was a technical problem and that we had to retrun to Shanghai. We were so annoyed that we weren't indeed heading back to Thailand that we didn't notice how nervous the pilot sounded.

We had an OK landing and I looked out of the window to see 20 fire engines on the runway surrounding us, complete with police etc. This is when I realised that all was not well. The feeling was intensified when the by now obviously nervous pilot informed us that we were going to be taxied to a remote part of the aiport as far away from other planes as possible. Took a while for the following to occur to me:

They wanted us as far away fom other planes so that we didn't set them on fire if we exploded. However, they weren't remotely interested in getting 400 people off a plane before it exploded!

Nice, huh?

We taxied for half an hour, during this time there was a commotion up front and the inevitable announcement came "erm is there a doctor on the plane, if so please show yourself to a member of staff". Honestly, it was like being on a tragically rudimentary air thriller. The plane was boiling because they couldn't have anthing running and we were cooped up for a while. Eventually they let us out and we were bused back to good old gate 32 with the prospect of another long wait ahead of us. No information came, none was volunteered. There were only 5 westerners in total and we were ludicrously hovering around each other to make sure we didn't get lost and could trade any precious info we had. The same man as before had another heart attack at the gate and people just stood around and stared at him and started fanning him. Eventually, an ambualnce was called and he was carted off. But it took a long time. They left him on the place until last which I am sure didn't do him any favours.

As a Dutch guy who had been living in China for ten years said, we had hit the double jackpot of misery by flying Air India in China. It was just such a stupid situation. Eventually, we were told that we would be on a Thai Air flight at 9am and had to go back through immigration (it was 6am by now, not that there was anybody at immigration anyway) to pick up our bags and then re-check them for our new flight. erm, can't you just put our bags on the other plane? and we didn't have any either! Chinese people started getting angry and there was lots of shouting. They hadn't given us anything to eat or drink. We'd been there for nearly twelve hours and tempers were running high. It all turned out ok in the end. The Thai air flight was fabulous. I have flown with them about 5 times now and every time it has been great.

It couldn't diminish our fab time in Shanghai in any way, though. I just won't fly air India again. Still, this comes in second to four days stuck on a bus in the Ecuadorian jungle, so it wasn't that bad. I think J still gets stunned that when things like this happen I am the one who is calm and not particularly bothered and he gets angry. I just get irate at the little things.

Can also guarantee that everybody else's NY was far better than mine. So, looking forward to hearing all about it. Let's just hope that wasn't a sign of things to come for me this year...