13 January 2008

January 8 & 9, arrival in Italy

My various flights to Florence were pretty uneventful... except for the ridiculous quarantine situation in Toronto. And thus follows the lengthy tale broken down by the hour or so...

4pm
Arrive in Toronto
5pm
Get through security to international terminal and wait for my flight to Munich
7pm
A bit before the plane is supposed to start boarding we are told there is a medical emergency on the flight arriving at the gate so our flight will be slightly delayed because that is the same jet we will be using
8pm
Medical emergency is still a big mystery and our take off time keeps getting bumped back
9pm
It becomes apparent the medical emergency is in fact 10 quarantined passengers on the previous flight . At this time another passenger tells me they saw officials in hazard suits on the tarmac earlier.
10pm
It is announced that the Canadian government had okay-ed the plane for takeoff, and then changed their minds, and then right when they were about to say it was safe again one of the quarantined passengers used the restroom on the plane and the entire thing was restricted again. We are now in a bit of a limbo because changing planes takes a very long time but so does cleaning and securing this one evidently.
11pm
We have a plane and a gate! But oh wait...the entire crew is now under quarantine as well so we must find a new flight crew before takeoff.
12am
Flight finally takes off to Munich (thankfully on a different plane)

Ridiculous

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holy shit! That's insanity. Haha. I'm glad you finally made it though...

Devin said...

I would have had to strangle that last guy who took a piss in the bathroom, that might have been it. If my aunt was there we would have been escorted out of the airport with armed guards, I'm sure. Did you ever find out what they had they required quarantine?

Hope Florence is better than Toronto! Lol, enjoy!

Kate said...

Wow probably better to wait a few hours than to get some kind of crazy disease! Luckily you had the good old Canadian government there to protect you. I hope that you are doing super well and not getting too lost in Florence :)
Love,
Kate

Alexander Freeman Graves said...

ridiculous