In the US

Well, it's the first week of a rather hectic month or so for Mark and I. Over the space of the next 5 weeks Mark and I will partake of 4 trips to the US between us.

I'm here this week doing a bit of a whistle stop tour - in Chicago last night for 1 night, then travel to Philadelphia today for 2 nights before going home again. I got a bit lucky though!

I had to decide if I wanted to do a 2 leg journey on the outbound or inbound leg - I opted for outbound as let's face it - when you are coming home you just want to get home as quickly as possible. So yesterday I was booked onto a flight to Philadelphia, and then an internal one on to Chicago. Imagine my dismay when I overheard (as I was waiting in the longest ever check in queue known to man) that the Manchester - Philly flight was delayed. By 6 hours!!!! In fact the plane had only just departed Philly on the inbound trip! Clearly this meant I'd certainly miss my planned connection, and quite possibly the later ones too! I left my (much coveted and half an hour in) place in the check in queue to pop to customer services to see if they could reroute me.

Initially the lady told me as I would still just make the final connection of the day I'd have to stick it out (would mean I'd arrive in Chicago around midnight instead of the planned 17:10). I must have looked rather stricken as she then worked it out again and said that the connection time was about 45 mins and maybe a little tight, and that she'd try getting me on the direct BMI flight. They weren't answering, but the girl next to her said she's spoken to them just before, they had 9 seats, and she was just issuing some tickets now so she decided to do the same for me! Good job too, because just after they'd been issued someone did manage to talk to BMI who were clearly kicking off that they been sending so many people over as they now didn't have enough dinners. Eventually they were persuaded to take the people with tickets already issued (me!) but wouldn't take any more! Yey! So I ended up arriving at about 12:30 instead! Woohoo!!!! And I still get my direct flight home on Thursday too.

The only slight problem was that when i went to check in today it transpired that instead of just cancelling my outbound trip somehow they'd cancelled the whole itinerary! After much much faffing, the nice man in Chicago managed to get me rebooked onto both today's and Thursday's flights, so I get to go home still after all. Yey!