The longest flight … made longer!

One of the many parts of the adventure of moving overseas is the flight over.  When we lived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, (our first overseas posting) we made the mistake of having four stops to get there. We had an 11-hour layover in Paris on our anniversary and had visions of seeing the city during this time. What we didn’t consider was the numerous bags, the airport construction with no lockers and our jetlag. Needless to say, it was a fairly ugly 11-hour wait for another 8-hour flight.

Fast forward to last week. Smarter and wiser, we planned the least stops and made sure that we would have no layovers outside the USA. Our flight plan was from MSP to Chicago then Chicago to Beijing. Easy. 

In Chicago our flight was delayed 3 hours. No big deal. Access to wireless and food made the time go quickly. However, the trouble began when we boarded the flight.  Naturally, the economy class was bursting at the seams and the lovely business and first class were comfortably populated. After getting all settled in our 3 inches of leg room for the 13-hour flight, we were told that there were some repairs being done and it would be another 30 minutes. Ugh. But we want a safe plane, right?

This 30 minutes turned into one hour, then two hours. The plane got hotter; the natives were getting restless.

The plot thickened. Daniel and I were seated in a place where we had access to private matters of the flight attendants. A young Chinese girl came crying. Apparently the man next to here was elbowing her in the breast and now was reading Playboy in open view. The girl was terrified. All the important staff was called in, they moved her to business class for the remainder of the flight and then had the task of removing the man in question. The girl filed a complaint and the man was removed from our flight. 

Which meant his luggage needed to be removed from the plane—the CHECKED bags. 

Finally, after a 3-hour wait ON the plane, and a 3-hour wait IN the airport, we departed for our 13-hour flight to China. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?