Stuck on the Tarmac

I'll try to keep this short and sweet because I would rather not think about this episode. So you may have heard this story... about a Virgin Atlantic flight from Heathrow to Newark getting diverted to Bradley CT because of heavy rainfall in NJ... how that flight was held for 4 hours on the tarmac (from 9am - 1am local time) with no air conditioning (85+ degrees in the cabin) only to be finally turned into an airport that wasn't equipped to handle nearly 300 passengers and crew.

Well, that was the flight I came home on. I was suppose to arrive at Newark around 6:30pm on Tuesday evening.... but got in at 7am on Wednesday instead.

But this flight really had been doomed from the start. We couldn't board on time in Heathrow because the plane was over 100 degrees and needed almost 40mins to cool down to a more reasonable temperature (warning signs of mechanical failures to come?). We then waited another 20 min for two passengers that felt they were too good to show up for the plane on time (they never made it, and their luggage had to be offloaded).

Once we touched down in CT, we were told it was only a matter of time to refuel, recharge the plane batteries, then we would head back to Newark, where the storm would hopefully would have blown over. We had been told that the storm was so bad it had shut down all of the local airports; Newark, JFK, and La Guardia ....

However, after the third mechanical failure (power outages, which turned off the lights and the air-conditioning) .... and the ground crew filling (and I quote) "the wrong gas tanks" on the plane* .... then as the ground crew started leaving for the evening .... you would have thought someone higher up would have made the call to get us off the plane. But we had to clear customs because we were an international flight -- or at least, this was the reasoning we were given as to why they couldn't get us off the plane and wait in the terminal....... even though at least one person required oxygen because he was suffering from heat stroke...

When we were finally let off the plane around 1am (with the help of the shuttle buses from Hertz and the local hotel because there wasn't enough ground crew to help) it still took another 2.5 hours before I got cleared through immigration.

We were told that there weren't hotels available for us because there was a PGA tour going on and all the local hotels were booked --- so shuttled buses were being coordinated instead. But, finding buses at 2am proved to be quite a challenge... so it was 4am by the time I was on a bus headed back to Newark.

At 7am - 12 hours late - I finally got to Newark airport ... tired, anxious, and incredibly thankful to be headed to my parents house**.

3 days later we got on a plane to head out to San Diego.

(sigh) ... and the travel marathon continues***.

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* Seriously, how do you fill the "wrong" gas tanks on a plane? Why do they have wrong tanks on planes?

** I still have some serious questions about how poor the decision making was while we were waiting on the tarmac. I'm not really convinced by all that we were told - there must have been something else going on, but they didn't want to scare us ...? Regardless, the whole thing felt really fishy.

** I realize I never really gave a full time-line of where we've been and where we're going:
May 1 - May 25: Sikkim
May 25 - June 4: England
June 4 - June 16: Baltic Sea Cruise
June 16 - June 22/23: Holland
June 26 - July 6: San Diego
July 6 - July 12: San Fran
July 13 - Aug 1/2: BROOKLYN
Aug 5 - 17: NC, KY, SC
Aug 18 - Aug 26?: New Jersey
Aug 26: Return to India