The Longest Flight Ever

So I'm now sitting in Newark Airport, it's 5:30 AM on Thursday. As I told jack my travelling companion in all of this: I didn't think I'd miss this connection with a seven hour layover in a million years! In the end I did miss my connection last night but that's not the half of it. Here goes... Yesterday we got on in Belfast and everything was fine. We boarded early and were off to a flying start. We were about halfway between Newfoundland and Iceland when things started going wrong. I had been moved form my assigned seat to another seat with more room. It turns out I'd have the "front row seat" for the show. The 83 year old lady across the aisle started to turn white. Her blood pressure had dropped, here pulse was erratic, this wasn't good. Luckily there were two nurses on board who did a wonderful job with her. One in particular was an interesting fellow who was built like a truck, had lots of tattoos, a pierced lip, a haircut not unlike mine, and a wonderful bedside manner. They laid her down, got out the defibrillator and monitored here vitals. It's amazing what they carry on the plane for just such an emergency. Things looked good for a while but she eventually took a turn for the worse. When they hooked her up to the IV and moved here to the front I knew things weren't going well. We turned and headed several hundred miles back to Iceland for a medical reroute. That wasn't bad enough, although I'm OK with it, it had to be done, and everyone on the plane was fine, except... In Iceland we weren't allowed to get off. We were not going to clear customs there so they thought it would be a quick stopover. Now, before the lady started her medical issues there were two American women who were acting strangely up front. (It turns out they were refused boarding on a flight out of Belfast the day before, now I know why.) Anyway, they had been acting out for a while and when they were refused more alcohol, the flight crew asked the Iceland Police, who were on the plane anyway, to escort them off. A few questions arise from this: why didn't we go to Newfoundland if we were so close? Well it turns out there were serious headwinds so Iceland was the faster way to get down. Also, what would have happened to the two women if we had not had to stop? Well, lets just say I saw one flight attendant with a plastic bag that had what looked like restraints in it. Remind me not to cross the Continental crews in the future! So we are on the ground in Iceland (a very pretty but desolate place) and are negotiating oxygen bottles, fuel, and maintenance checks. Because of the language barrier, differences in airlines, and the fact that the ground crew didn't want to take the pilots credit card (really), we spent another three and a half hours on the ground. Once we got back into the air everything went fine. In the end we spent thirteen and a half hours on the plane. I have to say the flight crew were excellent and I need to remember to write a letter to Continental (although I don't think I'll be flying with them again for a while because of other reasons). Arrival at Newark went OK. I got through customs and immigration without any issues. The airline put us up in a hotel but getting a shuttle out to it was another 45 minute wait. It turns out the Crown Plaza where we were supposed to go was full so at the last minute we were taken to the Sheraton. It was a nice room but it was 11:00pm local time (4:00am Irleand time) by the time I got to bed and my new flight in the morning meant I had to be up around 4:00am. So much for those meetings today. I think I'll stay home and get some sleep. That is my adventure. Add that to the delays in Greenville trying to get to Ballymena in Northern Ireland in the first place (see previous post) and I see why some people (you know who you are) don't like flying through Newark.