So I'm in Namibia now - will post more on this later - but first I'll summarize those 30+ hours of flying and sleeping in airports that were June 4-6.
DC to London was nothing too special, just a redeye flight like any other I've taken. Landing at Heathrow was where things got comical. I was sitting next to a grandmother and her granddaughter from Yorkshire and, as we were taxiing in to the terminal, they pointed out a 747 parked in front of what looked like a maintenance building that was missing pieces of its vertical stabilizer (not sure if I should call it a rudder). Anyway, the plane definitely looked like it might have been on fire some time in the recent past, so I made some clever remark about being glad that wasn't our plane and thought nothing of it.
When I got to the gate for my flight to Johannesburg I noticed there was just a bus, not a jet there. I'm sure you all see where this is going. We boarded the bus and headed off to find our plane, only to find that -- drum roll, please -- it was the ghetto jumbo jet with half a tail. (It really had more than half, but the fact that part of the tail was GONE seems like reason enough to be nervous) So I climbed a long set of stairs onto a 747, absolutely certain that my life was going to end before I crossed the Mediterranean.
Things did get a bit better after that. The flight had only 53 people onboard, not including stewards, so I had my own row...from window to window. That's really helpful if you're looking for some good airplane sleep. It was also clear enough that I had an excellent view of the English Channel, Paris, the Alps, the Tunisian coast/Sahara, and eventually the Congo River before clouds/evening set in.
Spending the night in the Johannesburg airport was not as bad as I thought it would be (thank you, sleepinginairports.com!). I found a nice isolated set of benches to sleep on, then woke up to someone sitting against my feet. Apparently I settled down right in front of a gate with a late night flight, so within an hour of my falling asleep there was now enough of a crowd that the only sitting room were the benches I had rudely claimed for sleep. My bad.
Flying Air Namibia was almost as interesting as that last jumbo jet adventure. At first our boarding was delayed for 15 minutes due to "problems with the airplane."
Problems. More than one. What was worse was that after 5 minutes the airline rep got on the mic and said, "Nevermind, we'll board now." Another fine choice of words. When we did board, I was seated at the window behind the exit row, but the seat in front of me was missing. It looked like it should have been there actually, but there was no seat. At first I was a little concerned, then excited because of all that extra leg room, but then the flight crew informed me that I was now responsible for assisting the crew in case of emergency. I was the new exit row because part of the actual exit row was gone. Awesome. What followed was a very thorough explanation of how to handle my responsibilities. I've been seated in exit rows before, and this was way more detailed. In addition, the steward was using phrases like "after we crash" that did not leave me totally convinced in his faith in the pilot or the plane. Maybe you had to be there, but the combination of comments, the missing seat, and my earlier flight didn't do much for my confidence in Air Namibia.
Fortunately for all of us on that plane, my confidence rarely has an impact on the outcome of the commercial flights I board. The ride was fine, the food was actually delicious, and the weather was beautiful. The landing was perfect, the landscape was absolutely impressive. As I got off the plane I couldn't help but smile. I had made it, everything had worked out. No problems at all.
My duffel bag is somewhere between here and London. Crap.
