Okay, here's the trip home! Once again, I make the usual disclaimer that this was our experience and that yours may indeed vary. In fact, I really hope you experience does vary... for the better!
Installment 3 – the long trip home…
NK101/816 SXM to Fort Lauderdale to DCA, June 30.
We arrived at the check-in counter 2 hours before flight and the line was already all the way out the rat race lines and extended along the inside of the terminal for a bit. A gentleman immediately behind us remarked about the line but said he was just damn glad to have air conditioning. It kind of made me wonder why some people travel to the tropics in summer but, anyway…
We lunched at the little upstairs restaurant and had our one and only hamburger on the island during the week (despite the recommendations of several TTOL folks about the places that make such a thing on the island and the fact that we like good burgers – this was just how it worked out!). It was actually pretty good and we washed it down with some fresh tea and chatted briefly with the waitress who had one of the incredibly friendly, wide smiles I had come to see so much of on the island. She was great. We cleared through security (which was a breeze despite the traffic level at the airport on a Saturday). We didn’t want to duty free shop, so we headed to the Soualiga (spelling?) lounge and paid the $20 each to use it. It was very comfortable and almost deserted and we enjoyed our time there (which was extended as our flight became delayed). I chatted with the desk clerk who was another local with a broad smile and we ended up watching a bit of the Wimbledon tennis with her while I kept an eye on the other monitor which had news of the Glasgow Airport potential attack which gave me concern. Sonia wasn’t feeling well since she had a cold coming on and the lounge was a great choice so she could get some quiet rest before the storm that was to come. We finally went down to the gate area just before boarding was due and were immediately VERY glad we had chosen the lounge. Another Zoo, and not a good one. Our gate was B3 which, it turned out, actually meant B1 and then we were ushered on to buses to wait for the 100 yard drive out to the plane which we gladly would have walked, just like we did when we arrived a week ago (apparently Spirit and United can’t afford Jetways so we have to board “the old fashioned way”). Please keep that in mind if there’s likely to be a summer afternoon tropical downpour when you leave. It could make things very unpleasant indeed. The Spirit staff at the airport didn’t seem to want to interact with the passengers much and I felt that there could have been better directions, but I guess everyone was tired.
Well, what can I say?! We watched the Spirit flight the day before (Friday, June 29) leave almost an hour late and figured that might be an omen for us. It was. We were due to depart at 2:40 and actually cleared the ground at around 3:30. This didn’t bode well for our hour and a half connection for our flight to DC (since we would have to clear US customs and re-check bags) so we’ll have to see how it goes.
…It got worse. About an hour and a half into the flight I felt the engines throttle back and we were put into a holding circle since, as the pilot warily informed us, Fort Lauderdale airport was actually closed due to weather while we were on route. We described a large circle in the air somewhere over the Eastern Bahamas and then FLL reopened after a little less than half an hour but the overall delay was only growing longer and the connection time was evaporating. Air Traffic Control also requested we slow our speed and get in line with eight other aircraft that were performing similar maneuvers.
We had already figured on several contingency approaches to get back to DC in some kind of time (rent a car and drive the thousand miles, take the train, or just spend a few days on the beach in South Florida, our old stomping ground) since Spirit was booked solid until after July 4th. With the US legislature taking a week off for the Fourth of July, it would be a quiet week for me. How come they get to do that anyway? Please don’t tell me that they’ll all rush off to meet with their constituents – and they’ll take most of August off anyway!
We touched down very long and turned off at the very last taxi way at the other end of the runway (that was actually pretty exciting, in a way! I think I might need clothing optional again real soon, or at least a change of underwear) and it was around 6:45 p.m. or about 15 minutes before our outbound flight was due to depart. Our only hope was that the bad weather would in fact have delayed everything else as well, and so our flight out might be in a similar predicament.
At least in the good old USA we wouldn’t have the long customs line we experienced in Sint Maarten. And, after all, we get to use the “Citizens and Residents Only” line, so we’ll just whisk straight through.
…not…
It cracked me up that in South Florida, at the walkway to the customs area of the Spirit Airlines terminal, where a large number of their international arriving flights are from South America, this was one of the few official places where the signs are only in English. I guess I appreciate the point but a little Spanish at this juncture might go a long way to getting people moving more efficiently. I really had to feel for a lot of folks who seemed baffled about which way to go or what they were supposed to do. It looked like most of these folks were actually residents and some were citizens but they were clearly confused. The line actually proceeded fairly quickly once we entered the rat races set up for US citizens and residents. Here was the reverse situation for Sint Maarten. If you were a non-resident, you went straight to the head of a little line, put your finger on a little biometric reader and chatted briefly with one of the customs agents and you were through. Once again, folks in wheel chairs were ushered to the head of the line so I told Sonia that the offer to break her leg still stood. For some reason, she again declined.
The problem wasn’t the customs clearance area. The devil was waiting for us downstairs in a little old baggage room and he was in fine form indeed.
There are two carousels here and a couple of video displays that told us there was baggage being unloaded from a Spirit flight from Cancun and another from Romulus 7 or some-such. We didn’t get the gag until several more flights had arrived and bags had been disgorged. The video display units didn’t change for the hour we were in the baggage area. They just kept saying Cancun and Betlegeuse… Yes, I said “hour”. We started at carousel “B” since a number of our flight-mates gravitated to that area. Many bags were coming out. No one was claiming them. It got to the point where the bags were actually getting crushed by the machine as they popped out of the loader belt and had nowhere to go but into the wall as the carousel made its inexorable loop. I tried to visualize just how much super-glue it was going to take to put together all the dive gear once we got the bag (now it would be a “sack”) from the hungry machine.
At this point the herd got spooked and turned for carousel “A”. Naturally, I went with them. We watched more of the 7:00 p.m. bag crunching on Crunching Machine A but no one seemed to actually want any of the freshly re-sized luggage so it just got worse. A nice Spirit employee (who must have been new since she actually was brave enough to wander into the morass of angry passengers while she was wearing a uniform – this could put a whole new take on clothing optional as the herd tore her uniform off and devoured it) walked by and I simply said “Saint Marten?”. She said “Oh yes, carousel “B”, very soon!” I thanked her profusely and this time was at the head of the stampede back to the other baggage re-sizer/masher. It was actually fairly empty and so twenty or thirty passengers might actually get their bags in the original size and shape. Assuming of course they had already passed through immigration…
We watched the bags begin to come off and soon realized these were from a flight elsewhere (from South America) and not Sint Maarten. After watching the bag re-sizer begin to start it’s awful work again at carousel “B”, I glanced back to “A”. Wait! Those are SXM passengers and one of them just picked up a bag/sack! Quick! There’s no time to lose (other than the 50 minutes we had already been there)! I raced over to “A” just in time to watch it stop. It started again! Phew! …then it stopped. This procedure seemed to be run by the baggage handlers just to see how many passengers they could actually make pass out from the anticipation. We must have been a tough bunch (the guy next to me was from New York, after all) but we all stayed on our feet and then, almost miraculously, our three bags just showed up! There they were! It seemed like we were actually going to survive! We were only an hour after the planned departure time for our flight to DC. Was it possible the plane would still be there?
Now, you can’t make a cell phone call while you are in this area. Apparently the US is afraid you might contact evil-doers. Frankly, I don’t see the risk. What am I going to do? Call my compatriots and tell them not to bother attacking the country since things are already pretty screwed up? Now please, in addition to the work I do in Public Health and Foreign Aid I also worked in designing airport security software for several years from 1999 to 2005 and some of the folks I was working with at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey died when their offices were among the those destroyed when the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center Towers so I’m not insensitive to the whole security thing but this really seemed pretty silly. Many of us could have called out to find out what was going on with connecting flights and then made other plans while we were playing carousel roulette in the steamy little baggage crushing center.
Anyway, bags in hand (and on-shoulder) we entered the line to get through customs. I had images of getting to the officer only to have him say something like “Where’s your form CS188-D7/J?” We’d look at him dumfounded and he’d say “you’ll have to get the form, fill it out and go back to the beginning of the line… Buwhahhahaha!”. It didn’t happen and we were through the process and out into the public area of the terminal. There’s a sign that says “Re-Check Bags” with an arrow pointing along to a massive crowd. Surely there won’t be any chance we can make our flight but we should be at least able to get a Spirit agent to tell us what the situation is. As we get to the end of the line we hear a call from the desk “Anyone going to DC? Anyone going to Washington-Reagan?” What? That’s us! We start acting like real wonderful human beings as we push ourselves through the mass of desperate humanity to get up to the head of the line. We’ve just been handed a little penny from heaven and we sure aren’t going to let anyone else spend it! We can’t bring ourselves to even look at the sad faces of those who are going to be “left behind” as we and the other DC passengers are given a reprieve. We get to the counter and a young harried Spirit agent says “Leave your bags right there on the floor and take these boarding passes and… RUN! Run upstairs and get to your flight! It’s ready to leave right now! RUN!!” Stupidly, I say “will our bags make it?” and he simply says “we will try, but I just don’t know”. This won’t do for me. I would rather have my luggage now and make my own way home rather then make the run back to the airport day after day in the hope our luggage will finally show up. So I turn to tell Sonia that we’ll take other options only to discover that she has already left. Husbands she can get but a seat to DC? Forget it…
So I say a quick goodbye to my faithful scuba gear and hope that whoever finally claims it will treat it well and rush off after her. I could never replace her with someone anything close to better, so I’d better just keep up! We rush upstairs into the common public area of FLL terminal 4 on a Saturday (cruise ship day!) and get to security. We’re not going to get through here anytime soon. So Sonia and the other DC passengers just start forcing their way the head of the line. Just like that! I, of course, follow to act as the sacrificial dagger board for all the knives the folks in line are throwing at us since they won’t be able to take them through security any way. At the security screening machine I’m not sure what I actually took off and what I placed in the bin (laptop, camera, shoe, sock, adult toy whatever) but it somehow all made it through and, in the end, I was still wearing my own clothes and not those of the lady in front of me (that’s good because she had terrible fashion sense).
We rushed through the packed terminal (our gate was, of course, H9 at the far end!), past Nasty Nathan’s hot dogs, past the throng women still standing in line for the restroom (“hey, didn’t I see you in line here last Saturday? Oh God, how horrible…”), past the Red Cross volunteer still handing out water and to the gate where the aircraft was still boarding. Thank Goodness! We made it! We rushed aboard and took our seats. We were going home and were still married! Hooray!
We waited there for another hour… waited! We could have bought liquids. We could have walked. We could have gone out to see a first run movie at one of our favorite movie theaters in Coral Springs 20 miles away. But no. We waited.
We finally took off a little after 9:15 p.m. for a flight due to leave at 7:00. I didn’t see anybody freeze dry themselves with one of the hyper-water sucking muffins but the little credit card readers sure were busy selling drinks so I guess Spirit’s master plan is going to pay off.
At DC we made it to the baggage carousel that Spirit normally uses and waited… and waited… It’s now 11:40 and we’re just dazed. I think I could have been declared brain dead a while earlier. A couple of bags came out and then it died. Naturally, our bags weren’t among them. Then the Northwest airlines carousel began to move so we moved towards it (“we’ve played this game before honey, isn’t it fun?” ).
Look! Right there! That one and… yes! That one too! Where’s the other one… oh, there it is!! Jump for joy they made it! They actually made it! Who knows what’s actually inside but they’re definitely ours!!
Oh joy of joys! We can finally drive home! Only 40 more minutes to go! We got our trusty Ford Explorer and paid the parking and headed out into the DC night in the sure knowledge that the whole process of being passed through the meat grinder of Spirit Airlines/Bad weather in Florida and the immigration and customs process still hadn’t rubbed the shine off of our first Sint Maarten visit.
We could still see the beautiful Caribbean Sea off of the sea wall at the villa and we knew someone else would soon check in and begin the miracle of travel life all over again…
So folks, I might try Spirit again since a lot of this wasn’t their fault (weather) although some of it was (the layout and operation of the baggage crushing room) but they sorely tested us. I will definitely look at shipping my gear next trip and just doing the carry-on thing like so many of you on TTOL have recommended. After all, those folks could have simply exited immigration and ran for the DC flight and then waited on it for a whole two hours instead of the short one hour that we got. It would have been much simpler though and we’ll definitely do it that way if we fly again. A boat trip on the trawler for us would turn a one week trip into a month and that kind of time off is a little farther out in our future so we’ll probably do the “ship the gear and take carry-on bags only” thing for the next trip this year.
Thanks for following along again…
I’ll follow up with reports on the diving, then the villa and our observations on the island itself.
I hope you’ll stay patient!
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