If you fly enough, the unexpected is bound to happen. Lost luggage, late flights, missed connections, offers to take “a bump”, and the occasional apparent high jacking. (If you missed my post about Flight 245, you should look it up.)
Ruth and I engaged on all sorts of travel adventures. We encountered some traveling alone, some with our three youngsters in tow, and one or two while traveling with Brady on our baseball adventures. Luckily for Eva, nothing out of the ordinary happened when she flew with us. She was our good luck charm.
We never had the opportunity to fly with Young Jackson James. We did much of our recent flying to visit him. He just sat and waited for our arrival.
Several days ago, Young Jackson, and his mom and dad, made the flight to Michigan to share in Ruth’s Celebration of Life. They flew into Detroit from California’s Orange County Airport. If you’ve ever flown west, you know the prevailing wind lengthens the trip. Flying east generally takes less time than flying west.
The traveling Tebo’s found that to be the case on Thursday, June 15th. They were running ahead of their scheduled 6:30 p.m. arrival until a storm rolled in. Their pilot was directed to circle the area until it was safe to land. They did this until they ran low on fuel and were re-directed to the Toledo Airport. If you look on a map, you’ll see the two airports are about sixty miles apart. From thirty thousand feet that’s like having Siri direct you to “take a slight left in 900 feet”. In any case, they landed in Toledo, refueled for the sixty-mile flight to Detroit, took off once again, and arrived at 10:30, a full four hours late.
Lucky for us, Mike and Kate have a documented flight pattern photo to share. It looks more like the markings for a sky writer than a passenger jet. The picture says it all.