Most of you will know about my travel adventure at Manchester Airport by now. For those who do not, I spent the best part of 15 hours on a plane at Manchester Airport, going absolutely nowhere. I was meant to travel to the United States, via a connecting flight in Paris. It really was a day from hell, but looking back, it was also a comedy of errors on the part of Air France.
Firstly, they allow us to board the plane before realising that they need to refuel it and can’t refuel it because of snow and ice on the tarmac. So, we waited for hours for the tarmac around the plane to be cleared, with only the sight of surrounding planes soaring into the sunrise. The plane was eventually refuelled, but then it turned out that the wings has frozen and needed to be de-iced. And there wasn’t a de-icing truck to be found.
At round lunchtime, Manchester Airport was closed because of the snow. We were allowed to disembark and I set off in search of food. The Boots sandwich fridge was empty and ridiculous queues had formed at every food establishment in sight. Even the vending machine was being mobbed like a Hollywood film star. We were promptly advised to reboard the plane for a scheduled take-off at 1500. But guess what happened next? Yep, that’s right, the wings froze up again. And the de-icing trucks were nowhere to be seen. Five hours later, we are still sat on the tarmac at Manchester Airport. The only thing that was moving were the passengers, to the cockpit to ask what on earth was going on. The staff inspired nothing but diffidence, as they had no idea if or when this plane would depart, or about any information on connections from Charles de Gaulle Airport. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of travelling through Europe’s second busiest aviation centre, Charles de Gaulle is the Channel 5 of airports. You avoid it at all costs, but sometimes there is no alternative. The staff are generally rude and unfriendly and the food is extremely expensive. And the airport itself is as easy to navigate as a labyrinth. Also, aesthetically-speaking, it is a post-modernist experiment gone horribly wrong.
Family and friends had told me not to fly with Air France and to avoid Charles de Gaulle Airport. But, I thought it would be OK. ‘It’ll be OK. France is a highly-developed, technologically-advanced country. It’s national airline should be fine to travel with. Besides, I speak French, so it should all be good.’ I spoke in English to the flight crew and didn’t let on at all that I could speak French. When it became clear that something was going very wrong with the flight, I went to the front and spoke to the crew again, in English. But then I started to listen to what the crew were saying to each other in French in an effort to get more information. Eventually, I was drawn into speaking some French. One of the flight attendants started pointing at things and describing them to me. ‘This is ‘la bouteille’, this is ‘le verre.’ ‘Aah, interesting,’ I commented without letting on. By this stage, I was tired and fed-up. Parisien French is very quick and is sometimes difficult to understand because of this. The words can be like bullets coming out of a machine-gun and you can’t tell them apart. So I decided not to show my hand. Besides, it was interesting to eavesdrop and find out what was reallly going on!
Just before we de-planed, I began to feel in a slightly better mood. I knew that freedom was at hand and a wave of patriotism swept over me. This was my country, I was safe here and didn’t want to leave. The thought of sleeping around Charles de Gaulle Airport on the off-chance of getting a seat on a different flight four days before Christmas didn’t seem like a good idea to me. A sense of camaraderie was palpable in the flight cabin, and we shared chocolate and sweets with other passengers. The guy sitting next to was meant to travel home to Pennsylvannia, and the girl next to him was going home to Bulgaria. ‘Ah well, we’ll never have Paris’, I said to them. And so it proved to be.
