Travel Problems....

[maryf]

Well, this trip to Baltimore, which was going OK up til Thursday has turned in to a total disaster! For those who don't read my Facebook, after a nice, normal take-off from Washington DC, on timer and everything, about 90minutes in to the flight there was an odd sort of bump - not turbulence, but almost like a little hiccup. 30minutes later the pilot came on saying they thought some cargo had broken loose, and we would be diverting to Boston, once they had spent 20minutes jettisoning fuel. We landed in Boston with no problems at all, and lots of ground staff rushed on to the aircraft looking nice and efficient. Half an hour later they announced the cargo was all OK, and the compressed gas cylinders they were carrying hadn't exploded (apparently this was the pilots concern). Half an hour later he came on again, and said they'd inspected the outside of the aircraft and looked at the fault report data....and there were no faults reported, and no visible sign of anything wrong outside, so they didn't know what had caused the problem and so were terminating the flight in the interests of safety. We then had total chaos as Virgin tried to work out what to do with 308 passengers. I finally ended up at a grotty hotel 20 miles north of Boston at 1am. Friday morning they said the aircraft was being examining and they were liaising with Airbus engineering (yep it was one of ours - an A340-600) to clear it for flight. At 1pm they announced it could not be cleared, and they would be flying a new aircraft out from Heathrow to take us home, which would not depart until Saturday evening. I tried phoning them to see if I could change to a different flight, but they said all flights from Boston or NY were fully booked..... So ended up stuck at the hotel from hell in the middle of nowhere in a freezing cold, wet and foggy Massachusets country area. (or is that New Hampshire - it was close to a town called Danvers). Eventually this afetrnoon we all got bussed back to the airport and checked in for the flight which may leave at 10pm or 10:30pm - no-one seems too sure. At least I can be comfortable in the Virgin lounge until they do decide! Apparently our original aircraft is still grounded, and they still don't know what is wrong. All of us passengers are guessing lightning strike, but who knows!

I shall be very glad to get home tomorrow!