Delays

I flew in from Ethiopia yesterday morning, camped out in the airport for 6 hours, boarded the flight to London and was just settling in when the pilot announced a technical fault. He had to pull off the runway to talk with the engineers. Half an hour later we returned to the boarding gate for inspection. It took an hour for them to figure out what the problem was and determine that it could be fixed. An hour after that they’d located the parts. Two hours, dinner and a movie later, they realised that the problem wasn’t going to be resolved within regulation working hours. So we were forced to return to the terminal, collect luggage and then wait for a shuttle to an airport hotel. At 2am I sunk into bed, disappointed that I wouldn’t be waking up in the UK and frustrated that I would have to wait until tonight for the next flight out of Joburg. It would have been better to go home and see my greatly missed husband briefly. But my tickets couldn’t be rerouted. Sigh. So here I am again at Johannesburg International, passport in hand, for round two. Hopefully my next blog entry will be from the land of red double-decker busses!