Plane trip from Cincinnati to Washington, DC

(Jean is writing this blog entry from a lovely Hampton Inn near Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC)

Surprise! Things don’t always go as planned. Yesterday morning’s weather reports predicted that a huge snow storm would hit the East Coast sometime during the afternoon. Therefore, our travel agent suggested that we get to Cincinnati as soon as possible to ensure that we arrived in Washington in time to catch our 11 am, Jan. 27, Ethiopian Airlines flights to Addis Ababa and Kilimanjaro.

Margie and Hank Clark graciously changed their afternoon plans and drove us to the Cincinnati airport which is really in Northern Kentucky. We discovered that earlier flights would not be leaving for DC. Even worse, we were informed that the Delta flight we were scheduled to take to DC was being diverted to Detroit. We were also told that we would not have to get off the plane in Detroit because it was just “picking up additional passengers” to lessen the number of Dulles’ arriving flights.

The ticket agent who checked us into the system in Cincinnati said that there was a chance that we wouldn’t leave Detroit so she booked us on a 7:30 am flight this morning out of Detroit to Dulles.

Sure enough, when we got to Detroit, we were told that we had to deplane and stay overnight in Detroit. All Washington area airports were closed down due to the snow storm. However, most of the hotels near the Detroit airport were already full because of the many cancellations that had already occurred during the day. We finally got a room at a Red Roof Inn and had dinner at 11:30 pm. But we were comforted knowing that we had that 7:30 am option to get to Dulles in time to catch our 11 am flight to Africa.

We caught a shuttle back to the Detroit airport at 5:30 am only to discover that our 7:30 am flight had been cancelled. Kirk found some wonderfully helpful Delta employees, but found out that the next available flight would be at 5:30 pm today, much too late to catch our flight to Ethiopia.

As we were walking down the concourse to get a cup of coffee, we saw a gate for an 8:45 am Delta flight to Reagan Airport. Kirk asked about available seats and told the agent about our problem, so she put us on the stand-by list and made sure that we got on that flight. We knew that we were flying to the wrong airport, but by taking a really fast 40 minute cab ride from Reagan National to Dulles, there was still hope that we would be able to catch our Ethiopian Airlines flight.

By this time, our bags were booked all the way to the Kilimanjaro Airport, and Jean was pretty sure that things were so mixed up that we would never ever see them again.

The sun was shining as we landed in Washington. Our cab driver was from Ethiopia and very excited that we were going to be visiting his country. He spent the entire 40 minute cab ride to Dulles telling us what books we should read and where we should go while visiting Ethiopia. We learned later that we will actually fly into the city where he lived before moving to the USA. Upon arrival at Dulles, he wished us a wonderful visit to his beloved country.

Alas, upon arrival at Dulles we learned that our flight had already left. We found helpful Ethiopian Airlines employees who helped us rebook our flight to Addis Ababa. We’ll be going on the same flight… except tomorrow rather than today. Unfortunately, we’ll be on stand-by for the flight from Addis Ababa to Tanzania. But they also booked us on the next flight to Tanzania in case we can’t get on the flight that we want.

Since we now had an unexpected 24 hours in DC, we tried to find out where our luggage was. We learned that our bags were back at Reagan National! Delta had made sure that the bags followed us. When we asked Delta to transfer our bags to Dulles where we now were, Delta told us that that could only be accomplished by first flying them to Atlanta and then to Dulles, arriving about 9:30 pm tonight (maybe). Since Kirk didn’t have anything better to do, and we really wanted to see our bags again before turning them over to Ethiopian Airlines tomorrow, he decided to take an hour shuttle ride to Reagan, gather up our luggage from Delta, and return to Dulles via the shuttle with our bags.

In the meantime, Jean checked us and our carry-ons into a Hampton Inn, called travel agents and Cross Cultural Solutions representatives who needed to know about the change in our plans, and did some suitcase reorganizing.

Now we are both in our hotel room, all rested and repacked, and will soon meet niece Lana and her friend James for dinner. It is ironic that the roadways today in Washington are clear. The snow is piled 20 feet high on the sides of roads and is weighing down the branches of trees, but the roadways are clear. However, people who live here tell us about the terrible storm last night and how impossible and dangerous it was to be out and about.

This unexpected disruption in travel makes us happy we added an extra day to our travel plans. We are thankful that we are safe, and that we have our luggage. It could have been so much worse. We encountered many helpful and pleasant airline employees at all four airports that we’ve been in since yesterday afternoon when we thought we’d be making a short one-hour flight from Cincinnati to Dulles.

Assuming that everything tomorrow goes as planned, the next posting on this blog will be from Moshi, Tanzania. The excitement builds as we anticipate the next several weeks!