Air Canada - I

- Vidhya Krishnan

During my PhD in 2002, there was a computational biology conference in Edmonton, Canada. Generally, conferences are held in nice and beautiful places so that participants can enjoy their visit. From our two of us along with my supervisor planned to attend the conference and present posters on our work. The airline we chose was ‘Air Canada’. It is the best airline for 2001.

We booked it from Manchester (an hour and a half from Leeds). We were quite excited about the trip as it is one of the biggest international conferences. We arrived at the Manchester airport with huge tubes that carry our posters. Everyone in the airport starred at us as though we were carrying AK47. Apart from my PhD work, I also carried a poster we prepared on our own with few of my friends (one of them is a last minute.com in submitting assignments or posters). He handed it to me at the last minute and was quite excited about me presenting the posters we prepared on our own. We stood in the queue waiting for it to move. For a long time, we stood in the same place chatting. There was an announcement that the flight is delayed by 5 hours. The queue dispersed and we went to the café shop to spend 5 hours. Myself and my colleague went around the airport. He is a funny Greek guy who doesn’t like to shut the mouth even for a second. Most of our lab mates often wondered where does he get the energy from! He can talk on any topic from politics, history to religion. My ears automatically got tired after an hour and I couldn’t hear any thing of what he said. My supervisor became the victim. Finally, we spent our 5 hours and were tired. Fortunately, the flight was ready now. Thanks to “Air Canada – the best airline of the year 2001”, we got the business class although we booked economy class. Very comfortable and posh seats. Luckily, I got a seat away from my Greek colleague.

We arrived at Toronto and went through the tedious migration procedure where there is no such thing called ‘privacy’. They checked all the personal belongings. Finally, when we came out we realized it is already time for our connecting flight. Toronto airport is a huge airport and we had to go to a different terminal. We collected our check-in baggage and literally dragged and ran in the airport. It looked as though we were on a race. My Greek friend didn’t stop talking even in the run. He was cursing the ‘Air Canada – the best airline of the year 2001’ for making us run like this in a huge airport. Finally, we ran for 20 minutes and stood in a long queue. Something told me it is not the right queue. We enquired and found out that our connecting flight had already gone. Hurray! We missed our connecting flight. Thanks to Air Canada -……………………..

We sat in the airport. It was nearly 11 pm. We (just myself and my supervisor) were quite tired. Our Greek friend had now started on the new topic- Canadian history. We were sleepy and exhausted. We waited for an hour for the next connecting flight. My supervisor heard all about the Canadian history like a story time for sleepy kids. I sat somewhere quite far away and had a nap. The connecting flight was ready. We boarded the flight and kept my bags and slept. After an hour or so, some whispering noise woke me up. I saw the flight was in the land. I thought it was a pretty quick flight. I asked the person sitting next to me, “We arrive at Edmonton so fast!?” He said, “No, we are still in Toronto. There is some problem in the radar.” We all had to get off the plane and wait for another one. Finally, we managed to fly to Edmonton and reached at 4 a.m. Since we didn’t reach Edmonton on time, the hotel we booked thought we won’t turn up and cancelled our bookings. After all the hassles we got rooms. Now, my Greek colleague was a bit tired! Thanks to Air Canada – the best airline of the year 2001. The story is not finished yet.

To be continued………….