Blessing in disguise?

My flight back to Bangalore from JFK via Heathrow was on 5th De 2007, at 18:25 EST.

I left home by 13:00 hrs because the weather was expected to get worse as the noon progressed. It was a full 1 hr drive in the taxi from Jersey City to JFK.

I had already checked in online with my seating and baggage. So, I had to just drop the bags off at the kiosk, collect my boarding pass and get on to the lounge for the long wait. I checked my bags in by 2:15 and the security queue was not too big, 2:30 I was on the duty free shops and the lounge.

Grabbed a Chocolate muffin (which I’ve started to love so much after coming to NY) and Ice tea, spent like 45 mins in the café.

I just them remembered that I had got this book “The Monk who sold his Ferrari” when I was leaving from Bangalore to NY. I hadn’t touched it after I came to NY coz of my hectic schedule. Started reading it from page 101 (where I had bookmarked it 75 days back).

After doing all these also, I was left with a full 2 hrs for the flight to start boarding. Tried the Duty Free shops, did some last min shopping (which I’m so obsessed with in NY). And there I was in the flight in no time.

The flight boarded by 18:10 as scheduled and left from the gate. Then started the whole episode. The flight moved from terminal 7 to the adjacent one over a bridge. Under the bridge was the traffic jam of NY. It was an emphatic view. I missed my camera too much. I remembered seeing this view in some of the pics on the internet. But this was my 1st personal experience.

Ooops!! I forgot to mention, by the time I got to the JFK, the weather did get worse (as rightly forecast). It started snowing with small flakes when I was in Midtown and by the time I got to JFK, it started snowing quite heavily.

The traffic jam I mentioned was partly due to the weather too. Though at that time of the day, the road traffic everywhere in NY gets worse.

The flight moved the adjacent terminal as I was mentioning. The flight stood standstill for like 20 mins and then then captain announced that the weather had got worse and I would take some time to get air.

I was sitting besides the window and I had quite a view of the happenings outside on the ground. There were some vehicles around the wing and tail spraying water over it to remove the snow on them.

It took a full forty mins to clean both the wings and tail completely before the wings could open up indicating that it would be taking off sooner or later.

As the flight had come over to the adjacent terminal, it had to find its way back to the runway on that terminal. The flight again stood still for another 30 mins with the captain announcing that the flight is scheduled to depart late (which was very evident by now to all, unless one was sleeping already).

Again the wheels started rolling, and we could see at a distance flights taking off, so it was a sigh of relief that we were somewhere close to the runway to take off. One the plane started to make its way towards the runway, I started counting the planes in the queue for take off… 1 2 3 4 5….. 10.. Ours was the 11th flight in the queue waiting to take off.

It took another 20 mins for our turn to hit the runway. The flight took off finally at 21:10 EST. It was a total 2 hrs 45 mins late. The only best thing that could happen to me.. I had 6 hrs transit at Heathrow. Thanks to the weather at NY and the air traffic, I was now left with less than 4 hrs of transit at the Heathrow. Is it bad or a blessing in disguise for me? Though for others in the flight who missed their connecting flight because of the delay, British Airways rebooked the next connecting flight to their destinations (as announced repeatedly by the Captain during landing).