PASSENGERS ON FLIGHT FROM BELGRADE TO CHICAGO VIA FRANKFURT WAITED FOR HOURS

AUTHOR: M.JAHOVIĆ GDNUS

This morning, at 5 o'clock, I arrived at Belgrade's Nikola Tesla Airport, in order to return home to Rockford, Illinois, after working in the Balkans. The plane from Belgrade to Frankfurt was scheduled to take off at 6:20 a.m. However, the Lufthansa flight LH418 was delayed for a full two hours, allegedly due to snow and ice. Finally, at around 8:20, we took off for Frankfurt. We arrived at that German airport, but, the devil is not lying, new problems arose. As soon as we boarded the Boeing 747-400 of the German company on flight LH 430, they announced again that it would be delayed due to snow and ice and that several flights had been canceled because of it. However, there was no snow at the Frankfurt airport. And so we passengers sat on the plane waiting for it to take off with us to the United States for 12 hours and 55 minutes, but not to Chicago but to Washington, and then later late in the evening we flew from the capital of America to Chicago. But it was important to me, like everyone else on the plane, to finally get home. But time flies, and the plane is still tied to the runway in Frankfurt, and we passengers are trapped inside it, without the possibility of getting out and of course without food and water. There were no apologies or explanations of any kind, except for the occasional intervention of one of the cabin crew, who informed us that the flight was delayed not because of snow and ice, but because of nothing more or less than a plane malfunction, and that as soon as the malfunction was fixed, the plane would take off for its planned destination across the Atlantic. The wait got longer, we passengers trapped on the plane, probably from Lufthansa thought that we would scatter due to the malfunction and that there would be no one to take off with that plane. And so, waiting endlessly, finally, a little after 3 p.m., the Boeing 747-400 took off from the Frankfurt runway with or without snow and we headed for Washington, not Chicago, where we arrived around midnight local time. Which is about 7 a.m. Central European time. In translation, I traveled from Belgrade to Chicago for a full 26 hours instead of 9. Mashala, we arrived safely without Lufthansa, that's all that matters to me.