My Flights

The plan was Saint Louis – Atlanta – Newark – Frankfurt, Germany – Delhi, India for a total travel time of 27 hours. There were shorter, faster options but they all cost more and without having a job it's the cost savings that are more important than time savings. Note how I used “was” to denote the past tense meaning that things didn't work out quite as planned.



With 1 flight down I thought “yeah” only 3 to go. Despite the first flight being the shortest at 1h 20m it felt like only being ¼ of the way done was going to take forever and in truth it wasn't even close to being a quarter of the trip.

My Flight from Atlanta to Newark was supposed to leave at 2:09 but was delayed until 3:51pm. Then we didn't load the plan until well after 4pm and spent another hour sitting on the plane. When I finally landed in Newark I had missed my flight to Frankfurt by almost 2 hours. Lufstansa said no problem (this isn't even the airline that caused me to be late, that was Airtran, who offered me no assistance) and booked me into Munich, Germany instead on a 8:10pm flight. This flight was also late as a result of the weather, we sat at the gate for a long time loading passengers up. The airplane was an Airbus 340 or 380 and is the longest plane in the world. When I scanned my boarding pass to get on the flight rather than flashing green to go ahead it blinked red, meaning stop. Apparently the seat they had given me was occupied by someone else already so they moved me back one seat. When I got to my new seat it was also occupied and the first seat they had given me had 2 people with tickets for that seat. We talked to the flight attendants and they got it all figured out without a problem. The woman who had the same seat as me was flying with her husband and he was giving me angry looks and saying mean sounding things to me in German, luckily I didn't know what he was saying so I just smiled and nodded at him rather than escalating a confrontation. On the flight to Germany the majority of the people were speaking German and this is just the start of having no idea what anyone around me is saying, I feel very dumb, that all these people speak German, plus English and probably many more languages and I am so poor at the only language that I know.

My seat on the flight from Newark to Germany was an aisle seat, making it difficult to sleep because of my long legs and the short space provided for my feet and that I had no place to rest my feet. Beer and wine are provided for free like soda on most us domestic flights and you can even ask for more! So very nice.

In Munich I had a nearly 10 hour layover and spent the time sleeping in chairs, making phone calls to family and watching Indian movies on my laptop. I also got a sandwich and a soda and it was around $27!!! Good thing I'm going to India where things are supposed to be much cheaper.

On the flight from Munich to Delhi, I made sure to request a window seat so that I could more easily sleep. It worked, I slept two times and felt very refreshed when I landed in Delhi at 7am Delhi time 37 hours after I started out from Saint Louis.

All of my flights were pretty uneventful as I said earlier Lufstansa has free beer and wine and they have an interactive entertainment center for each passenger that plays movies and tv shows.

Once I got to Delhi I had to clear customs and it was so much easier than Canada, I got a stamp in my passport and they sent me on my way. No questions, no problems, it's a good start.