We might have been a few minutes late in departing SFO, but considering the weather, it wound up being fine. Without Miriam, the middle seat of the three was empty. The young man on the isle is a new transplant to San Francisco on his first job post college. His trip involves meeting up with his extended family first in Istanbul then traveling on together to their final destination. Most of the family has not been to their origin country in 30 + years, the young man never. He was both excited and nervous.
Me? The flight was smooth, the food decent, the seats decently comfortable, most of the kids on the flight were behaved. Given that it is an “overnight flight” just about everyone was quiet or slept.
Istanbul. I loved the old terminal. It had class, interesting architecture and a sense of place. This terminal? New, shiny. It could be just about anywhere in the world: glass, steel, walk aways, transport carts, hordes of people moving in every direction. You know you are not in Europe only by the dress of many of the men and women hurrying for their flights. But seriously, Terminal F at least as all the charm of a couple of the newer terminals in Miami where you have stores interrupted by the occasional boarding gate. Here, at least, there is no overhead tram. Instead there are dozens of terminal employees driving small electric carts moving people, luggage, and goods between the gates and terminals.
Besides finding a comfortable place to wait, my other challenge is going to be figuring out where my connecting flight will be boarding. Apparently, taking a page out of the British Handbook, boarding gates aren’t posted till a couple of hours before the flight.
Ok back to the audio books and maybe some stitching….
They once changed my gate five times in the half hour before departure. At one point I boarded the wrong plane, but was clever enough to ask the flight attendant before taking my seat. When I finally got on the right plane and we left the gate, the pilot announced, “I hope you enjoy our flight to Milwaukee. And for those of you who believe we’re going to Kalamazoo, I hope you enjoy the flight anyway”.
Do my amazement, my luggage also got on the right plane.
That sounds even worse than my six airports in one day trip home. It was supposed to be just one plane change – which would have been three airports (starting, change & ending) but at the plane change, an idiot broke an overhead compartment which meant we were almost two hours late leaving Chicago. Dominoes fell from there. We were diverted to Kansas City, but my possible connection had already departed. So it was on to Phoenix and from there to Los Vegas before I finally got to Oakland. I did wind up with a good size voucher for future travel…