Hey guys!
Well this was another first while on the field for my squadmates and myself, our flight to Nepal got cancelled. This was an experience many of us have endured during flying, this just happened to be our first time while on the field. I’m gonna tell you guys the ordeal we went through to get to Nepal.
We arrived at CSOW in Hyderabad, India the night before at 8pm. We were due to leave at 2am to head to the airport and our flight was around 7am. We arrived at the airport get through customs. Where many of us had our bags flagged to be searched, mine was one of them. The TSA guy kept telling me that I had scissors in my bag. I didn’t. I opened my packing cube and my electrics bag to show him there were no scissors. He took my bag again and sent it through the x-ray again. Came back and told me that there were scissors in my bag. Again, I opened up more compartments of my backpack, still no scissors. At this point I’m getting annoyed. I’ve been up for over 36hrs straight and my patience was wearing thin. The TSA guy took my bag and again put it through x-ray and came back to tell me there are scissors in my pack. I dumped all the contents of my backpack out and told him to find them because there are none to find. He picks up my solar powered lantern and asks what it is. I tell him. He sends it through x-ray and tells me this is scissors. I show him it’s a lantern by turning it on. He was like ok, you can go. So I had to put all of my belongings back into my backpack and make it to my gate in less than 10mins. My gate by the way is on the other side of the airport. Road an elevator to the departure floor and literally ran to my gate with 4mins to spare. I’ve never ran that fast before while dodging people. We get called to board the plane. We find our seats. Pilot comes over the speaker tells us we’re going to be delayed due to fog jn Kathmandu. We sit in the airplane for nearly 4hrs waiting to take off. The flight attendants gave us these snack boxes for the inconvenience and free water, chai, or coffee. It was nice and all but I was wanting to be in Nepal not sti i India. We unload the plane. Receive our big packs and wait in the airport until we know whats happening. After waiting for probably another 3hrs we finally get some answers. The airport is putting us up for the night and will be shuttling us to two different hotels. My big pack was at a different hotel than me and we had other people’s big packs as well. Slightly worrisome, but my squadmates and I are professionals by now, we just grab the bags and carry them. Even if tge person they belong to aren’t there. Of course, we messaged the other group to let them know we had their bags and them in return. The hotel we stayed at fed us dinner and had hot water. So we were able to have a hot shower and dinner plus a place to sleep for the night. Next morning, the shuttle arrives at 4:30am to take us back to the airport and hear we go again. Get our tickets, check our big bags, and off through security we go, or so I thought. I had gone all the way over to security while the guy checking us in still had my cell phone with all of our names and information. I got out of line and booked it back over to check-in. Retrieve my phone and off I went back to security. Crisis averted!we get through customs, security and we finally arrive at our gate. Some are joking since the reason we were cancelled the day before was due to fog. Now, the fog is thick in Hyderabad. No worries we still had a couple hours before we were due to fly out at 7am. Many of us got coffee and doughnuts for breakfast, some subway other McDonalds. We get called to board. We take our seats and we taxi out to the runway. Roughly an 1.5hrs later we land in Nepal.
