We were supposed to arrive home yesterday. Didn’t happen.

The start of our day was perfection, especially for a travel day. We were awake and up in plenty of time to walk out onto the (very) quite Sunday morning streets and find something for an unhurried breakfast.

We had done most of our packing the night before and were pretty much ready to go, except for the last few things.

We checked out and left the hotel exactly at our planned time and walked to the train station with no issues. There were few people about and traffic was light, so even crossing the roads was easy.

 We found out train quickly (though those underground walks can be quite lengthy). Seats became available by the second stop, so we rode comfortably (except for backpacks still attached to backs.)

It was a bit of a walk form the train to Departures, though I did not mind as we had a lot of sitting ahead of us. More, so much more, than I had expected.

Bags dropped, we whizzed through security and had plenty of time for coffee and lunch. Both were adequate though the usual airport prices did apply

We arrived at the gate in plenty of time. Aside from the usual scrambling about as passengers tried, and failed, to load in an orderly fashion. We were comfortably in our seats in no time.

The captain advised that everyone was on board and the doors could be closed. We were ready to depart.

And that – was the beginning of a rather unhappy chain of unfortunate events.

The plane was pushed back from the gate and ready to progress out to the runway. Which we did not do. Instead, we sat there. The captain advised that there was a mechanical issue that needed to be looked at before we could depart. So, we sat there.

To his credit, the captain continued to update us every 15 minutes or so.

1) The left engine would not start.

2) The starter was not working so they would try to start manually. 

3) Manual starting was not working so they were investigating options.

4) The starter had failed and needed to be replaced.

5) They were sourcing a starter.

At some point, he also advised us that safety was the highest priority. I am certain we all knew this, but it was nice to hear him say it out loud.

After the second hour, he advised that consideration must also be given for the crew. Right. The crews can only be onboard and working for a certain amount of time and hours had already passed. I have been on a flight that could not fly after a long delay where they  kept us in the plane and the crew on duty. In that situation, we had to overnight while the airline flew in a new crew.

The Captain appeared about halfway through all of the above. He walked the aisles, talked to the passengers and answered questions. Of course, many of the answers amounted to “we don’t know yet” in some form or another. Whatever the case, I think we all appreciated the fact that he had made an appearance. I have flown more flights than I can count, and I have never seen a pilot do this before. Well done!

Finally they announced we would return to the gate so we could deplane if we wished to while the starter was repaired. Even if we stayed on the plane, at least we could take off our seatbelts and move about which, cannot be done when on an active runway.

Only 10 minutes or so after arriving back at the gate, we were advised that a starter had been sourced, though the flight would not go out tonight. Arrangements were being made. I think we had seen that coming.

We took our belongings, deplaned and followed airport staff along a series of hallways and staircases to arrive back at customs and immigration which we had to clear.  We were told to go out to the arrivals area, and ground staff would greet us there to take us to the hotel buses. This was probably the most frustrating bit – it took forever and there was a great deal of confusion. I felt pretty lucky when I found out that hotel arrangements had been made by zone. We were Zone 2 so out of there pretty quick once things got moving. Hooray!  It shouldn’t be long.

It was probably an hour before we were asked to follow a representative to a bus – bit of a walk but ok. At least the ride was short. Hotel check in was relatively efficient as was the distribution of meal vouchers for dinner and breakfast. The staff at the hotel probably processed 30 groups in no time at all. (They had clearly done this before.)

One thing that Air Canada did that I really appreciated was to jump in and prioritize taking care of the families with small children, irrespective of their class of travel. As a parent, and grandparent, I really appreciated that, as did the families. It was late, parents and children were exhausted. It had been a hard day for all of them.

By this time, it was 8:45. Practically, the hotel had prepared a buffet of… acceptable trough food. We ate. W had a drink. We went to bed, but only after emailing Sandy to make alternate arrangements for picking up Trixie. We never connected live, so I had to hope that my messages were enough for her to work with. (They were.)

We were up early, after a restless sleep, had breakfast in the buffet and were fortunately out of the hotel on an earlier transfer bus than expected.

I say “fortunately” because the bus broke down before arriving at our terminal. Twice. Each time the driver managed to get it started after 10 or 15 minutes of trying. We limped on, finally arriving at Terminal 2.  Worth noting almost everyone on that bus was from our same cancelled flight; all things considered, everyone was pretty patient.

Yay! We are at the terminal. Almost there… wrong. Just when we started to think nothing else can go wrong, the passengers and the ground crew  discovered that the bag tags were not printing. So, we all lined up like good little ducklings in a huge line.  This would at least our 6^th or seventh 7^th line by now. This process took a while. A bit of grumpiness was beginning to show.

A half hour later our bags were tagged, and we were on our way, with another meal voucher in hand. Starbucks. When we get to the other side of this, I am going to the only café on the other side that I can be certain will have a pumpkin spice latte (it’s the season!)

The airport wait was interminable this time. While we waited to take off, I did the math. We spent 11 hours trying to get home on Sunday, excluding the entire hotel piece.  We spent another 5 hours just getting back to, and through, the airport today. Our flight is just under 10 hours so this journey of challenges will have taken us 26 hours. We will actually arrive 25 hours later than expected. But we will be home. (Pretty sure we could have made it to Australia with a flight change in the middle there.)

I know everyone likes to hate airlines. I often do too. But Air Canada did well by us in a difficult situation. Their communication was stellar and we had everything we needed to at least be moderately comfortable. I heard many more passengers express appreciation and gratitude than anger.  So – maybe this bad situation was not as bad as it could have been after all.

And just look who’s waiting for us!