EI822 ORK-CDG 1 MAY 11 (ECONOMY)
Posted: 04 May 2011, 23:19I am so not ever, ever, ever travelling with you!
Last year a dear friend from the US announced her intention of visiting me along with her sister this year. Now while they were both as welcome as the flowers in May, that same month was anathema as Aer John was due to take his final exams at university and I was anxious that there should be the minimum of disruption in the honey lamb household during that period and he would have had to cede his bedroom for the duration. Fine, except that fares in June from their part of the States to Ireland were exorbitant and as the sister had always wanted to visit Paris, plans were changed to that destination and I was invited to join them there.
My friends, not realising there were back-to-back holiday weekends with a royal wedding chucked in for good measure somehow managed to score a good fare for the Wednesday of Easter week for seven days. I however was not so fortunate but on the Sunday of the second weekend the fare to Paris plummeted and it soon became perfectly possibly for me to join them
Fast forward to Sunday May 1 and a happy honey lamb set forth for Cork airport with nary a care in the world. OLCI had been completed and her usual seat of 6A had been available (can someone tell my why when my profile with EI says I prefer a window seat, it always offers me 6C - an aisle seat?
) The check-in area was deserted and a boarding pass spewed forth from a kiosk. That was the first indication that all was not well 
In large letters the BP signified that the gate would close at 13:30............ but the flight was scheduled for 13:10!!
A quick trip to the empty check-in desk confirmed that indeed the flight had been delayed. The early morning flight to Faro which on its return would morph into the CDG flight had gone out late. The pilot had been taken ill just before the flight and given that it was a 6:40 flight, it took time to get another pilot out of the scratcher, washed and dressed and into the airport. Ah, well, the flight was going to be 50 minutes late - so what? Wrong! Very wrong!
I grabbed some lunch and the monitors changed to a 14:40 departure. Fine, except the incoming flight was due at 14:35 and even Ryanair can't turn around a flight in five minutes. Sure enough a 15:00 departure was announced and it seemed to stay that way. At 14:20 the inbound flight arrived to our delight and no doubt to the delight of those who had been stuck in Faro airport for an additional 2 hours.
At this stage passengers in Cork were equally fed up and none more so than the myriad of toddlers who seemed to be on this flight. The flight was turned around; we boarded with alacrity and at 15:00 the doors were closed. At that stage the captain came on with his usual pre-flight blurb, apologised for the delay and explained about the poor misfortunate pilot this morning. The wave of sympathy through the cabin was palpable until the captain went on to say "However...." and there was the sounds of hearts plummeting!
The "However..." was an announcement that because of the delay we had lost all our slots and there was an ATC delay of 40 minutes!! The toddlers all protested vigorously, expressing how we all felt - another 40 minutes cooped up in an aluminium tube going nowhere! 
Fortunately the captain came back to say he had negotiated and earlier time slot and some two and a half hours after our scheduled time we took off.The flight was uneventful. A G&T was quaffed; the toddlers screamed and we arrived in CDG to recognise the same relief in the expressions on the faces of the returning passengers as we had shown when our plane landed. After that everything was plain sailing!
And the return flight? As smooth as silk and no problems whatsoever!
