This Super Bowl Sunday, we had a strong feeling of deja vu. We had been thinking and planning to take another space-a trip to visit the C's again, except this time it would be over to Germany. Originally we were thinking the end of February, but because of Bob's work, we had to slide it back to the end of January. Except then he had some more things he needed to get done at work, so we slipped it back another week, into February. We had signed up for space-a out of Dover, McGuire, as well as the AMC terminal at BWI. Twice a week, on Sundays and Tuesdays, there is a chartered military flight to Ramstein from BWI. That is closer than the other terminals, so we thought we would try there first.
As I tracked flights from all 3 places in January, it seemed like it would be a piece of cake to get out. There were flights to Ramstein all the time! Plenty of seats!
Of course as it got closer to when we were thinking of going, the flights really dried up. BWI flights were releasing hardly any seats, flights from Dover were all taking 0 passengers, and even McGuire, which I had thought was a sure shot, had no flights to Ramstein this past weekend. Maybe this wouldn't be as easy as I thought.
When I checked the BWI facebook page on Friday,Feb. 2, there were only 4 seats being released as extra seats on the Sunday flight. So that wasn't good, but because BWI wasn't all that far, we decided to try for it. It would be a nice practice run! We got all packed up and left after church. We got to BWI at 4:00, parked the van in long-term parking, and signed in at the space-a counter (door 19, down the stairs, by the "Green Bean" coffee shop, in case you were wondering). It was actually just a BWI information counter that gets taken over by the Air Force Sunday and Tuesday evenings for space-a roll calls.
Roll call was at 6:00, so after we signed in and marked ourselves present, we waited around. While waiting, we checked the check-in screen, where we noticed more and more people in front of us (categories 1-5, while we as retirees are the lowliest cat 6). Eventually there were 15 seats available, but 32 people ahead of us, meaning there needed to be at least 42 seats to get our family on. It seemed quite unlikely that at least 30 duty passengers would not show up, so we were not hopeful at all.
At the 6:00 roll call, the available 15 seats went to active duty guys on leave, as expected. But then the guy called some more names, including ours, saying that we were taking the spots of active duty personnel who hadn't shown, so if they did show, we would not go, and having our names called was really pretty meaningless at this point. In fact, they didn't close check-in for duty passengers until 8:00, so really it was pretty pointless to have roll call at 6:00!
But we all moved up to the main floor of the airport to wait on more backless benches by the check-in counters for AMC. There was a *huge* line of soldiers, families, etc., all of whom were expected to be on the flight. We waited and waited and waited. Fortunately the Super Bowl was being shown on a screen out in the middle of nowhere, so some people did watch that, sitting on the floor. I read Freakonomics, which I have been meaning to read since Christine had Nathan and Luke read it for AP microeconomics many years ago. I find that kind of economics, sort of the metrics of decision-making, incentives, etc, absolutely fascinating, and I am really enjoying the book!
Anyhow, the AF guy kept coming out and calling one or two more names, and more people would get to go into the line to check their baggage. But more active duty guys kept showing up too. Finally, just a few minutes before 8:00, the guy called the names of the last 3 or 4 families (including ours) waiting for space-a, the lowly retirees. He said we could go weigh our carry-ons and baggage, but we wouldn't get boarding passes because they still didn't know for sure if there was room. By this time we had already been waiting for over 3 hours. We had been thinking we would be well on our way home, stopping for dinner on the way! Instead we were eating cheese sticks, jerky, and other snacks. Fortunately the kids were really great and handled it all in stride. But it was just so much uncertainty!
So we went up to the counter where a really nice lady patiently weighed our mountain of backpacks and carry-ons, and then our mountain of luggage. We had 4 smallish suitcases, 2 rolling duffel bags, 2 trash bags of car seats, and an umbrella stroller, which seems like (and is) a boatload of stuff. But on AMC flights, each passenger can have 2 checked suitcases up to 70 pounds each, as well as 2 carry-ons, so we were actually traveling quite light, lol.
As we were waiting for the lady to check us all in, more active duty passengers kept trickling in. The head AF guy told our lady to not print off boarding passes yet, until they could "figure out what was happening". We kept hearing them say something about "8 seats", which led us to believe that there most likely were just 8 seats left--and of course we needed 10, so if anyone was going to get pulled off, it would be us. SO tense!
But finally the lady printed off the passes and took all our suitcases away, and we were free to go through security. When we got to the gate in E concourse, we stopped to go to the bathroom and refill water bottles--but they were already boarding families. So we did *not* have to wait in the huge boarding line; instead we were pretty much able to get right on the plane. The nice ticket counter lady was able to give us an entire row, row 56, just 5 rows up from the back of the plane.
We flew on a 747 with 10 seats across. Grace, Anna, and Faith sat on one side, and Bob and I sat in the outer middle seats, with Verity and Drew in between us. Caleb, Jonathan, and Micah, sat on the other side, with Micah by the window (he was ENTRANCED by all that was going on outside, even though it was dark). It did indeed take forever to board all the passengers--almost 500--but we were still reeling with surprise at the fact that we were on board! We were so expecting to be sleeping in our own beds!
No comments:
Post a Comment