Adventures in France

I left Salt Lake City on Saturday at 4:45 p.m. on Air France, and had one of the great travel adventures of my life. The plane was completely booked. There was not a single free seat on the plane. In fact, our takeoff was delayed for about a half an hour while the captain plead for four passengers to come forward and volunteer to leave the flight and take another one Sunday and a $600 Delta credit. Presently four older gentlemen left, and we were underway. I found that my seat was in the center of the center aisle the second row from the back, near the galley. I was surrounded by what appeared to me to be a Danish or Norwegian ski team—they were speaking some Germanic language (but not German or Dutch) in any event. I had previously set my watch by Kyiv time, and tried to sleep shortly after dinner. I succeeded in getting three or four good hours of sleep. I essentially hunkered down in the midst of my Norse sports team and slept.

All went well as we proceeded across the Atlantic, over Greenland, Iceland, Ireland and England and we had made up all the time we had lost in Salt Lake City on the ground. However, as we crossed the English Channel and flew towards Paris, heavy winds picked up and the pilot instructed the flight attendantds to buckle up. We then went through the wildest flight I have ever experienced. The plane was thrown around like a rag doll, up and down, side to side. The thing creaked and banged, and everyone held their collective breath. I was actually starting to feel a little quesy, and I noticed a similar reaction from other passengers. It got progressively worse, and as we descended the last hundred feet toward the runway, we were being thrown around so violently that I feared a crash. The pilot put the plane down, and the passengers burst into spontaneous applause.

That was just the beginning of the adventures. Next, we taxied to the terminal, but the pilot soon announced that due to winds of 75 to 100 miles per hour, the airport had instructed that it would be unsafe to connect the gangway to the plane. So we sat just outside the terminal for about an hour and a half, the plane shaking violently in the wind. Meanwhile I was alarmed as the time to board my connecting flight to Kyiv came and went. Finally, about five minutes after the scheduled takeoff of my Air France flight to Kyiv, we were given the go ahead to leave the plane. I ran down a long hallway of moving conveyers to the nearest information board, which must have been a quarter of a mile away. There I noticed that the Air France flight to Kyiv was also delayed for a few minutes due to bad weather. I found out the gate and terminal numbers and followed an endless stream of signs. Presently the signes brought me up several levels to a high speed tram station! I boarded the tram and then exited at yet another maze of walkways leading to my departure gate. And there I waited as the departure was pushed back again and again. Finally, about two hours after the original departure time, we were allowed to pass through the boarding station—

But the adventure isn’t over—instead of walking directly out to a plane, we were shown a staircase, which went directly down onto the tarmac, where we were placed in a waiting bus (with no seats). It was freezing, with high winds and blowing snow, and the doors were kept open at least twenty minutes while all of the Kyiv-bound passengers boarded. Then, we drove around the mammoth airport for about twenty minutes—and parked, with the engine running for another ten or twenty minutes. Finally, they opened the bus doors and we were ushered to a little cement tower with about six flights of stairs, which we climbed, luggage and all, and were then ushered into a plane! It was bizarre! But, I am now safely seated in my Air France flight to Kyiv. I hope the rest of the journey is completed without incident.