Flight Home

Normally, I wouldn't have much to say about my flights when I travel. You get on the plane, you settle in, you hope for the plane to take off and land and not have any real issues. If you are some people you break the rules and never turn your phone off, or if you are lucky enough, you get on a plane that has WiFi and you can update your Facebook Status the whole trip.

Today, however, I actually have something to write about regarding my flight.

I flew Frontier Airlines, and had to stop at Denver both directions (I was flying between San Francisco and Kansas City). The stop over is all of 30 minutes, or it was supposed to be that, but more on that later. In the future I recommend that you ALWAYS check in 24 hours in advance, if possible. I didn't do that on this trip and I paid for it. On both legs of the trip I ended up in row 23...the last row on the plane....the seats don't recline and I was right next to the toilets. My other concern was that I would be the last person off the plane and since I had to get to a whole other gate in a very short period of time.

When we landed in Denver, I realized that the attitudes of the folks the flight from Kansas City to Denver are very different than any other flight that I've been on in a long time. Normally, when a flight lands everybody is immediately out of their seats, getting their luggage out of the overheads and jockey-ing for who will get off the plane first. On this flight, I swear, everybody stayed in their seats the entire length of the plane until the row in front of them had emptied out. I sort of reminded me of church when the ushers would guide the rows down to Communion. Of course, I was still getting antsy due to the time to make my connection, but there was nothing I could do about it since I was in the last row, in the window seat.

Luckily, the plane that I was transferring to was late, so I actually had time to sit and people watch for a while in Denver. When they started calling for boarding, I was in the next to first group to board, since they boarded the people that needed assistance (including the Greek Orthodox Priest and the odd guy that was wheeling around on a tricycle) and their Gold club members. So, I get on the plane, make my way to the back of the plane and waited for my row mates to show up. This leg of the journey, I have the aisle seat, so I opt to stand in the back instead of having to keep getting up and down as they arrive...of course they would get there and then decided that they wanted to use the toilet, so I just kept standing around. AND it turns out that the lanky, hippy, guy that was in the middle seat hasn't been introduced to the magic of using soap in the shower OR deodorant...so that was QUITE pleasant to sit next to that for 2+ hours.

Then, about 30 - 45 minutes out of San Francisco, the older woman gets up and uses the toilet. As she is leaving the toilet and walking back up the aisle and she seems pretty unsteady on her feet. A couple of rows up from me, she really starts to lose it and this one guy gets up and tries to steady her and then the next thing you know he is guiding her to the ground and everybody starts hitting the call buttons. Luckily the guy that helped lay her down was a physician as were his two traveling companions. She ended up having a seizure and passing out. It turns out that she was diabetic and her blood sugar was totally out of whack. Everybody jumped in to give a hand, and truly pulled together to give this lady assistance. Eventually, she was able to get up and sit in one of the seats. The guys that were helping her sat on either side and kept an eye on her and when we landed everybody stayed in their seats so that the paramedics could come on board and help her off.

So, I've sat next to people with body odor before, but I've never been on a plane that had a medical emergency....all sorts of excitement!