Sleeping through First Class?

We were looking for the next available flight to anywhere on the east coast of America, since the next flight to Paris wasn’t until the next day and it was also overbooked. We found a helpful check-in agent (a rare thing in airports, except of course when I was on duty!) and she advised us to get the red-eye to Newark, where there was an empty flight to London leaving the next evening. My back up plan had been to go to Chicago, which had one flight to Paris, also overbooked. London wasn’t really in the right direction but we were tired and decided to leave our plight up to the experts. We made camp in one of the sparse airport lounges for about 10 hours until the flight to Newark was open for boarding late that evening. We found ourselves playing a game of ‘you look after the bags while I have a snooze for a couple of hours’. The idea was that the bag minder wasn’t allowed to fall asleep and leave the bags free to be stolen. It was a hard game after a 14-hour flight.

All went well for our flight to Newark (we were on our way again!) and when we arrived we tried to find lockers to store all our bags for the 12 hours before our next standby flight to London. No joy! Since September 11, American security has increased somewhat (!) and they now don’t allow left luggage in airports. So we chose our other option, which was to get a cheap hotel room, using the benefits of being an airline employee, i.e. big discount, and leave our luggage there. The added bonus of a hotel was that we could have a shower and breakfast as well. Opting (stupidly) against having a rest to catch up on some sleep, we decided to go in to Manhattan on the train.

We’d been to New York before but not since the September 11 attacks. I’d been working for United Airlines the day we found out the horrible news in Australia and we all at least knew somebody who knew the flight attendants that died on UA flights 175 and 93. So I really wanted to see Ground Zero. I had a feeling that being there would somehow bring relief and an end to the feeling I got every time I thought back to that horrible time. When we got there, I was touched by the messages from the thousands who, like me, had come to see the place where so many people had perished through no fault of their own. But I wasn’t prepared for the enormity of the destruction and the overwhelming sense of helplessness that enveloped me. No sooner had we arrived that I felt I had to get out of there.

That evening we not only got on the flight to London, but we got First Class! We managed to take a photo of ourselves enjoying the luxuries of the Boeing 777 First Class cabin as soon as we boarded (pre-flight cocktail in hand), even if we fell asleep straight after the camera was switched off! It was fitting that my last ever flight on standby with United was in First Class because 6 years before, my first ever standby flight with United had been in First Class. What a nice ending to a fun, but sometimes tumultuous and always stressful (have you seen the TV series Airport? All true!), career in the airline industry. And what a nice beginning to a new life in a new country.

But wait! That flight only got us as far as London. We still had to somehow get to Dijon with our 158kg of luggage (hey, our whole lives were packed in those suitcases!)! So we hunted around for the United desk and got advice from a ticketing agent. He suggested that we try to standby for a British Midlands flight to Paris as there were lots of them and we were sure to get on quite easily. I think my definition of quite easily is a bit different to his because it wasn’t that easy. We missed two flights before we got accepted on the second last flight of the day. A very close call in my opinion. Being stranded in London is not a cheap option! But it was definitely a relief to land in Paris because I knew we were home free, wherever home was now.

So there you go. Getting to France was a saga in itself. It should have been easy except that we travelled on standby, with all our possessions packed into four 32kg checked bags and two 15kg hand bags. And instead of flying directly from Sydney to San Francisco and then on to Paris, we ended up spending 76 hours travelling to our final destination, via San Francisco, Newark, London and Paris, with a couple of 12 hour layovers in there for good measure. And I still can’t believe we slept right through the First Class flight!