Canceled!

at my apartment

My bags were packed but the plane won't fly. The reason? Some stupid volcano in Iceland with a very tongue-twisting name was spewing ash to the skies which messed up air travel worldwide. Yesterday afternoon, I was at the JFK hoping to catch Finnair flight AY 006 bound for Helsinki. This was a trip that would have taken me to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Things were still promising in the morning when I followed the news at CNN and online. When I called the airline to reconfirm the flight around noon, the agent said the flight, which was scheduled to depart originally at 5:40 PM, was rescheduled to 6:30 PM. A check at the airline's website confirmed that the plane originating from Finland was actually en route to New York. So I took that as a sign that maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to fly.


I grabbed my backpack and daypack and took the subway which connected to the Airtrain, reaching JFK with plenty of time for check-in. Lo and behold, there was already a long queue at the check-in counters. Apparently, all passengers were aware of what's happening in the skies above Northern Europe and everyone's minds were focused on making it to this flight. The Finnish guy standing before me said he's only taking a chance on the wait-list hoping he could go home earlier than scheduled. Finnair agents were behind counters but were not checking-in passengers as they await final word from Helsinki. A female supervisor with a phone in both ears (!) was looking seriously at her monitor, telling anyone who can hear her that we have two hours to wait before any confirmation could be made.

Everyone surprisingly was patient enough to wait. When the female supervisor finally announced that the flight is canceled, there was a loud gasp but none of the shouting and cursing I've previously seen on a TV footage. It took awhile for me to digest the reality of a canceled flight. I shook my head. This is the first time it has happened to me - and a volcano had to do with it! My mind was swirling with things to do now and calls to make - canceling my unspent vacation days, canceling my hostel reservations, rescheduling my flights. I couldn't even reschedule my flight for next week as there's no way to know when the volcano will stop its menace. Which means my trip to the Baltics has to be postponed until later this year. If there's any consolation to this, at least I'm still in New York and not stranded in another city. And more importantly, we're all safe on the ground and not on some plane that's eating dust in the skies.

e-ticket to nowhere