The Worst Flight Ever

Our flight from Dallas put us in to Houston with over two hours to spare before boarding British Airways Flight 194 from Houston to Heathrow. We didn't get off to a great start. When our group was finally called to the gate for boarding, we were pulled aside so they could "check our IDs". That's what they do at the gate. They look at the name on your ticket and compare it to the name on your passport. They look at your passport picture and compare it to your face. For some reason all three gate agents had to look at ours. One of them felt compelled to look at mine twice. I have no idea what that was about, but if it would have stopped there, I would have been happy.

But as it turns out we were just getting started. We were in the center seats, two rows back from the bulkhead. The bulkhead is where people with babies and toddlers want to be. There was a family with three toddlers to the left of us, a family with one toddler to the right of us and a family with two older children and one toddler directly behind us. These kids started making a fuss before the plane even left the ground. Toddlers and babies often make a fuss until the plane reaches cruising altitude and levels off, so we didn't get too excited about it.

But in this case, that didn't happen. At the worst, all five of the toddlers were screaming and crying at the same time. At it's best, it was only one of them. But for seven solid hours (the flight from Houston is about eight and a half) at least one child was screaming non-stop. I tried putting on the headphones to watch a movie. I wanted to see The Invisible Woman, I'd missed it at the theatre. I saw it, but I heard very little of it. All I could hear was "The Tantrum".

I decided to try music. I looked at the Rock/Pop category. I had never even heard of any of those people. Where were the Beatles and the Stones? I checked Easy Listening. Again, people I'd never heard of. I settled on Classical, but the only thing even remotely loud enough to drown out The Tantrum was Strauss, and it really didn't work that well. I could still hear those wailing kids.

I finally woke the guy in the aisle seat (how he went to sleep I'll never know) and went to the far back of the plane. Mark went, too. We sat in the flight attendants' jump seats. One of the flight attendants apologized for the ruckus, told me to stay there as long as I liked and offered to get me some earplugs when I returned to my seat. Which turned out to be much sooner than I anticipated because the father of the most determined and consistent screamer decided to give the folks in the front a break and bring the little screamer to the back of the plane. By the way, the earplugs didn't help.

There were several times when I wanted to just stand up and start screaming myself. But I'm pretty sure that if I'd done that I would probably have been met by the police when we landed.  I still can't believe that those kids could carry on like that for seven straight hours. (We had a respite for about half an hour and then they had a reprise when the lights came back on an hour or so before landing. As another flight attendant pointed out to me, "only an hour and a half to go!") And just don't get me started on these parents who are more than happy to subject anyone and everyone within earshot to their child's bad behavior.

This whole incident had me so frazzled that I didn't even care how bad the food was. And it was bad. We were offered a choice between chicken curry and pasta with meat. "What kind of meat?" She didn't know. "Meat" as a general category isn't specific enough for me. It could be anything. I went with the chicken curry. I'll only say that if this had been my first experience with curry, it would have also been my last. The dish seemed to have two different sauces. A tomato-based sauce for the chicken and a turmeric-based sauce for the rice. Except that the sauce for the rice as only around the edge of the container instead of being stirred into the rice. Three bites was all I could manage but it would have to do until breakfast. I was looking forward to breakfast. But when it arrived in a container that required an engineering degree to open, I found I had a cold, greasy croissant. I also had a "good for you" granola bar. I did read the label - full of all kinds of good things - quinoa and other whole grains. You could probably make pressed cardboard taste as good and have an equal amount of fiber. It was disappointing because the last time we flew British Airways the food was better than what they serve on American Airlines. But not anymore.

We were just so happy to get off the plane and away from those screaming kids. But wait! There's more! It does not end there. After watching the same bags, none of them ours go round and round on the carousel, I went to see if all the bags for our flight had been unloaded. Yep, here we are starting our three week vacation with no baggage.

The fun was just beginning...