I'll Fly Away

I know that flying in Africa can be an adventure all in itself. So I thought I would share a couple of my experiences:

In February, I was traveling to Senegal to do some training. I had a flight from Jos to Lagos, Nigeria. And then I was supposed to catch a flight to Senegal from there. So I was waiting at the Jos airport for my 1:00 flight. When 1:00 rolled around, I wasn’t too surprised that I hadn’t heard anything about the plane arriving because I had been on this flight before and it was usually late. Not long after that, a man with the airline came in and announced that the flight was delayed and they were very sorry. The way he talked about it was funny because he seemed to imply that this was a very unusual situation for the plane to be delayed. It made me smile because I had never heard of this flight being on time. So I patiently waited and the man came back in a few more times to say something vague about the delay and apologize. At one point, one of the other passengers found a stack of complaint forms and started passing them out to everybody. I passed on this opportunity because I figured my written complaint wasn’t going to get the plane here faster and the other hundred complaints should suffice. Finally at 7:00, the plane arrived and we loaded up and flew to Lagos. As I was waiting in line to get on the plane an argument irrupted between a lady and the airport people. I think it had something to do with wanting to search her bag. She was not happy about this at all and she was yelling and throwing a fit. I heard her say at one point that she would come after them and get them. I just smiled because I know in America she would have been in jail at this point, but this is Nigeria and somehow it worked out and she sat in front of me on the plane. As fun as this was, I missed my second flight to Senegal and they didn’t have another one for a couple days. So I had to stay 2 nights in Lagos. The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful thankfully.

My second story was when I went on my trip to Thailand. I was waiting to load with the other passengers and they called all of us back to the check-in counters. They made an announcement that the flight was delayed because of a problem with some of the equipment. At this point it was chaos. They told us that there was a flight on one of the other airlines, but there was only 10 seats available and only certain people would be able to take it (depending on passports and visas, I think). Everyone else needed to sign their names and go to the hotel that they provided. This is not America. So there is no organization in this process, not even a line. So we headed to the hotel with no idea how long it would take to resolve this problem or how they would even contact us. I decided to not wait for them to let me know and first thing the next morning I called to find out. The flight would leave at the same time as it was supposed to leave the previous day. So we finally boarded the plane and they informed us of what had happened. Apparently, there was a problem with something on the plane and they needed to check it when they landed. Of course the airport in Abuja didn’t have the equipment for this and neither did the airport in Lagos. So they had to have it sent from Amsterdam. The Nigerian Aviation people also decided that while they were checking this problem out they might as well do a complete check on the entire plane. So I spent an extra day in Abuja and I missed out on a day in Amsterdam where I was supposed to have a layover. I got to Thailand a day late, BUT I got there. PTL.

All in all, I am very grateful for the luxuries of flying in America.