Code RED!!

Being in the second year, chang (my roommate at Purdue) and I had taken the liberty to go back to school a week late. But we had received some flak for that decision from our professors and we were glad that we were at least going to reach Purdue 24 hours before class started and this would give us some time to sleep our jet lag off and get started on some of the work that had piled up in our absence.

The flight from Bangalore to Delhi was on time with no delays (unfortunately for us we later thought) and the airlines told us that we don t even have to pick our luggage and that it’ll go directly on to the international flight... Life was good...

People in Bangalore often ask why the domestic airport was shifted so far along with the international airport and a compelling counter to that would be go fly international thru Delhi and find out!! The international airport is an hour long drive from the domestic airport and when you are traveling in an AC bus with the AC not switched on and you don t have the option of lowering your windows... It feels like eternity... or eternity as we thought then: p


The bus drops us off on the sidewalk at an extremely crowded and confused airport terminal and drives off!!! The passengers are standing there saying "now what!!"
I felt sorry for some foreigners in our midst, imagine their situation if we Indians felt lost and worried in this chaos..!!
Then, someone figured out where the counter was and we started moving towards it and this airlines agent comes and says "all flights out of Delhi delayed due to fog and please find your luggage; I think it’s lying around there somewhere!!"
I am not kidding the moron used the same words!!!
So we search frantically for our luggage and the pain of traveling with more suitcase than you have hands was just starting.. Luckily for us we find all our bags to only realize that the flight has been delayed by more than 8 hours!! Fortunately (or not), the airlines said they all be shifting us to a hotel for the night.

Trolleys are great!! Trust me, u realize that wen u need them and there no trolleys!!... so with the help of this man’s great invention, we move our luggage onto a bus and we drive for another hour to reach this nice place I guess...(forgive my cynicism here, but I was pissed off as hell and I don t know why they could not put us up at a place which did not require us to travel for 2 hours up and down)... so we reach this place at 12 in the night and they tell us they’ll give us a wakeup call at 3 a.m.. See what I mean by putting us up at a nearby hotel... so chang and I are hungry and being put up in a 5 star hotel with no dinner means that we pay 500 Rs. for a plate of Biryani!

I receive a call from a lady at 3 and she says "sir, your flight has been delayed by another 5 hours and we all call you in the morning to give you an update" I am too sleepy to care and I go back to sleep...and then in the morning at 7, I realize that the checkout time is 8:30 and there’s free breakfast!! (Not if you believe time is money, then we are being ripped off right now :-) )
What happens when there is a plane full of people trying to go down from their rooms with 3 pieces of luggage all at the same time and there are only 2 small lifts???
Operations students will say “the throughput is low and the input is rate is high and it leads to a queue in the system (Little's law for all the geeks :) )” So we spend half an hour in this interesting exercise and the hustle begins!! By the way in midst of all this I am asked to pay 120 Rs/minute to make a call home from the hotel...

So the airlines people book 3 busses to take back people to the airport and soon passengers realize that it’s not enough to fit everyone and it was fascinating to see international flight passengers trying to jostle each other (yours truly included) for a seat in the bus :-) I read somewhere people are hardwired and our instincts remain forever, it seemed that people had reverted back to their hunting days when it was survival of the fittest :) ... predictably, the bus's luggage compartment gets filled with people still yet to put their luggage’s in. I don t know if the airlines was trying to save some small change or it was a case of miscommunication but I do know that it was extremely badly managed..

So we arrive back at the airport only now it s sunny and thankfully, yes, thankfully less foggy.. And the flight s on time and we hear some rumor that there was ice in Chicago and stuff... Actually thinking back, I am flying from fog prone Delhi and snow/ice prone Chicago in January and I had actually hoped to be on time!!! :p

The flight takes off at noon Delhi time delayed by more than 12 hours now and our buffer time that we were glad about has now been reduced to less than 12 hours.....

So now we are 4 hours away from Chicago and the airhostess has just served dinner or breakfast (so when you are flying international, and before you land, are you on your source time or destination time??)
Anyway, I see a chocolate mousse and am eager to get to it...all of a sudden an airhostess runs to the mic and starts shouting "CODE RED!! CODE RED!!We have a CODE RED!! “There’s panic in her voice and the other hostesses serving dinner just push away their carts and run towards her...

Imagine this if you can... You are 10,000 feet up in the air and these people panic by shouting code red!! We have a code red!..
Now! What the hell is a code red?? My heart skipped a beat!! I had seen too many movies and my mind came up with thoughts like terrorists, engine failure, are we landing in a river?? Landing gear not opening.. (We were not even preparing to land... but this I thought of later.

Obviously passengers were scared as hell... This went on for a minute and then somebody said it’s a medical emergency... I am sorry to say this but it came as a relief to most of us... (Human instinct to live won over compassion) so then they called for any doctor's on board and 5 doctors volunteered and one of them even wore a gloves and asked for IV!!
They debated on what to do for half an hour or so... when Chang famously commented "too many cooks spoil the broth"

So much for the food... I lost all my appetite and the chocolate mousse did not fulfill its destiny of being eaten that day (though chang happily finished his meal thru all this.... for once chang world helped!!!)...for the rest of the journey we could hear intermittent moans of pain from this passenger. Finally it was time to land and after we landed we were requested to be seated for another half an hour so that paramedics could come and stabilize this lady and shift her to a hospital... we did see a puddle of blood when we were getting off the plane...

So after all this, it was only fair to the story that there should be more... because of our delay, we missed our coach to Purdue and we were left with a choice to spend the night at the airport or drive in the snow and after some 30 hours of travelling... anyone want to calculate that buffer time we had left??

So we decide to drive and decide to help another student at Purdue who is in the same plight by giving him a lift home...so if you have seen the TV show 24 you would probably guess that when you think you are done with it... there’s something more... yes, 30 minutes from my destination a cop flashes his lights behind me!!! I was supposedly going slightly over the speed limit!! Did someone say "Murphy’s law??"!!
Well fortunately for me, my record was clean and the cop just gave me a warning which obviously goes on my ex-spotless record :-(

So it’s around 2:30 in the morning and we finally reach our destination easily after 35 hrs of leaving Bangalore...all hopes of catching up on work long gone...