Happy Christmas

I’m back in Birkenhead (UK) for Christmas. It should have only taken 18 hours or so to get from Quito to Manchester (via Madrid and Heathrow). However, runway snow and other hassles put paid to that plan. In fact the plan fell apart pretty quickly. It should be simple leaving Quito, as they have an intercontinental airport, slap bang in the city centre; an air disaster waiting to happen, but awfully convenient.

So we set of at 6pm on Friday for a westbound trip to Europe. However, the flight from Quito to Madrid stops to pick up passengers at Guyaquil airport, which is on the coast and consequently to the East of Quito. And it wasn’t so much as a quick stop as a disembarkation then waiting for a different aircraft to take us on the actual flight to Madrid. We are behind schedule, tired and 200 miles further away from our destination than when we started.

But eventually we take off for Madrid. On arriving there we find that our connecting flight is cancelled due to snow at Heathrow. But this is not so bad, we would have missed it anyway, and we get given a night in a hotel and tickets for the next flight in the morning (7am). Trouble is, that flight gets cancelled too, then the next one, and the snow situation is getting worse at Heathrow. We eventually wangle a flight to Amsterdam and when there ask if we can change our destination from Manchester to Liverpool. Presumably because of all the flight chaos none of the airlines had any issues or extra charges, they just wanted rid of stranded passengers.

We arrived at Liverpool about 10pm on Sunday, 24 hours later than planned. In that time we visited 5 different airports in four countries and had at least eight different boarding cards each. But at least we made it. Unfortunately our luggage was not so lucky. One case limped home four days after us, the other two are missing in action, presumed dead.