Let me begin by saying that later I plan to write a much more pleasant post. Yesterday we arrived home from our trip to St. John and we had an amazing time. It was wonderful, it really was. I can’t wait to write more about it. But what is bothering us right now is that it is 3 pm the following day and we STILL haven’t received our luggage. We had a terrible time at the St. Thomas airport yesterday when we departed.
It was extremely crowded and all of the workers were rude and didn’t appear to know what they were doing. The clerk at the check-in desk kept typing in our last name wrong, and was getting upset at US for not being able to print out our passes. We gave her all of the information she needed! Finally her boss came over and the situation was righted, though without any apology.
The airport was so crowded that there weren’t any seats, so we had to sit on the floor. There were no signs indicating that the food court was under construction, so the only food available was a hot dog cart (bad for us), and a makeshift bar. At this point we at least needed a drink, but the line was 30 minutes long and the bartender had the personality of a wet cat. She basically threw our drinks at us and slammed down the change after we (politely!) ordered.
We were starving but luckily the magazine stand at least had some candy, so I grabbed some peanut m&m’s to eat on the plane.
When we finally boarded our plane after a last-minute gate change, the pilot was informed that the majority of the luggage still was not on the plane yet. Even though he was green-lighted and most of us checked in our luggage 2 hours before the flight!
The result was that we had to wait on the plane for another HOUR, in the 90 degree St. Thomas heat, until the luggage (or most of it) was loaded. Even the pilot was pissed off. Everyone was stressed out because they were going to miss their layovers, most of which would be the last of the evening at the airports after this 4-hour flight.
The heat was oppressive on the plane and they were unable to put the air on or unload passengers. We just about nearly passed out. One baby screamed the entire hour until his face was red==
poor thing but hearing that screaming for an hour was the icing on the cake. To make matters worse, we were informed that we wouldn’t be receiving our customary bag of peanuts on the flight, nor were we able to eat any peanut-containing foods because a passenger noted a severe peanut allergy. So that meant we couldn’t eat those peanut M&Ms and would therefore starve on this 4 hour flight from hell.
Just as we were getting ready to land the pilot was informed that the Philly airport we were landing into was so busy that he was instructed to circle for another 35 minutes. Lovely. As one passenger so eloquently put it “St. Thomas; come happy, leave pissed”.
Many passengers missed their layovers (as another passenger put it “our chances of making it on time were slim to none; slim just left the building 5 minutes ago”.) Luckily, we had a lengthy layover and we were able to make our flight just in time (with a few minutes to spare to finally get some food!).
This flight was remarkably better, and we thought we were in the clear when we landed at 10:30 pm. It wasn’t until we got to baggage and waited until 11pm did we realize our luggage wasn’t coming. Great.
After going to the baggage claim center, they were luckily able to track our luggage and told us it appeared to be coming from the next Philly flight and should arrive at midnight. She also said that they would personally deliver the bags to our home, though it would probably be at 3 or 4 in the morning. We were exhausted but couldn’t sleep a wink because we were waiting for our darn luggage to arrive. It is now 3:20 p.m. and every time we contact the baggage claim office they are giving us a different estimated time of delivery. First it was 8-10 am, then 12-2pm, and now they can’t even seem to contact the delivery place. This is just peachy! For all we know, the luggage hasn’t even left the airport-or it is somewhere in another hemisphere.
So sorry for the bitch session. Things could have gone much worse, so we should count our lucky stars for that. We’ll be prepared to write a much more pleasant post about our trip once this luggage finally does arrive…lets hope at least by midnight tonight (our rum was packed in there, y’know!).