Christmas At Charles De Gaulle Airport: Part 2

When at 7:00 pm we finally boarded the plane, I entertained slim hopes that my plane home

, due to take off from Charles de Gaulle Airport some three hours previous, would still be waiting on the tarmac in some bizarre spirit of Christmas turn of events. In honour of the airport system being thrown into utter chaos, on-board announcements were read hurriedly, unclearly, and exclusively in French. My tolerable comprehension of the language was, sadly, not tolerable enough to understand exactly what was going on and, given the fevered pace and stern looks assumed by the cabin crew, I didnt bother asking.

Funny thing was, after sitting on the runway for fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, my capacity for language underwent a miraculous improvement, and the following announcement, though spoken only in French, was crystal clear to me: due to our delayed take-off, we have lost our landing slot at Charles de Gaulle airport and will remain on the runway to await further instructions from CDG air traffic control. Along with our landing slot went my hopes for an easy, only slightly behind schedule stateside trip, replaced by the prospect of spending a night at the Hilton hotel CDG or, even worse, on the floor of the airport itself.

Having already resigned myself to a fate many would consider worse than death, and factoring in the brutal hangover I was dealt by a half-dozen odd bottles of Bordeaux the previous evening, I did what any traveller with the slightest instinct for self-preservation would do: I went to sleep. The dreams I dreamt sitting on that airplane, head bobbing and occasionally drifting dangerously close to the lap of the overweight Swedish woman sat next to me, were both too sublime and too horrible to recall. Will I ever see my home again, will the hotel Charles de Gaulle accept me or will it turn me away like so much used-up baggage hall refuse?

by: Peter Merifield

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