I admit, I doubted it was going to happen. We seemed doomed from the moment we arrived in New York! I wondered about the dirty washing sitting in our hold baggage; would I ever get to wash it?

To explain: we decided, in a mad moment, to go the long way home to London to take advantage of the generous baggage allowances on American flights. We were prepared to have a longer trip for the convenience of travelling with several suitcases between us.

American Airways succeeded in getting us there, for which we were very thankful, as we had had a previous bad experience with the airline and felt we were taking a chance this second time. We had travelled with our fingers firmly crossed.

On Thursday 24th April we set off for our return journey. The Heathrow to New York leg of the trip was accomplished without incident. It was in New York that things started to go wrong. The passengers filed on to the San Juan bound Boeing 767-300, an aeroplane designed in the mid eighties, and waited expectantly.

Eventually the Captain explained over the tannoy that the aeroplane had a leak which had to be fixed. “Don’t worry folks,” he said brightly, “It will only be a short delay.”

The cabin heated up when the air conditioning was turned off and time passed. Eventually it was obvious that this was not going to be a ‘short delay’ and we disembarked to wait in the cool of the gate lounge. Many of us began to worry about our connecting flights.
To give them their due, the American Airlines staff did not disappear when we had disembarked. I say this because this is what happened when we last travelled on the airline. We were left waiting for a delayed flight in a closed airport for hours with no information. This, however, is another saga in the Legg travelogue and I digress from the current story.

Eventually we returned to our craft. The Captain, sounding a little less bright than formerly, apologised for the delay and explained that due to American Airline cutbacks there were not as many aeroplane technicians as there used to be and so things took longer to fix. We, the fare paying passengers, appreciated his honesty and his refusal to fly with a faulty aeroplane, but wondered about the wisdom of the airline in cutting maintenance staff to save money.

We took off. Hurrah!

Next the cabin crew appealed for a medically trained person. Two passengers answered this request. It was apparent that there was ‘something going on’ further along the cabin, involving oxygen masks, anxious questions and several crew hovering over a passenger. Shortly the Captain, we were getting to know him by now, explained that, due to a medical emergency on board, the flight would be doubling back to Bermuda.

Once there the cabin was invaded by medical, immigration and police personnel. Within half an hour, the afflicted passenger, we understand an asthma sufferer, was removed with no fuss, transferred to the waiting ambulance and whisked off to hospital at speed. I hope that he makes a full recovery.

This left us in Bermuda, not Puerto Rico.

The Captain then informed us that we now had to be refuelled and we needed more oxygen on board before we could continue our journey. Adults sighed, children actually behaved themselves and time passed.

We finally arrived in San Juan six hours later than scheduled. I am sure that the crew on that flight must have been exhausted. Our American Eagle connection, along with the connections of a large proportion of the passengers, had long since departed.

We were booked into the Intercontinental Hotel in Carolina for the night. The airline representative brightly told us that she was giving us vouchers for dinner, breakfast and lunch and we were booked on the next flight to Anguilla, the following day.

We decided that what we needed was a bed so went to our hotel. The restaurant was closed but by now we were past caring as we had been travelling for over twenty four hours, so we went to sleep.

We had been given US$5 each for breakfast and soon found that this did not buy anything at all on the breakfast menu at the hotel. We looked at the dinner menu. We had our unused voucher for

US $10 each and found that this would not have paid for a meal either. I wonder what criteria American Airlines uses to determine how much is required to feed a stranded passenger? If there is a representative of the airline reading this I would be interested in the answer to this question.

We finally boarded the flight to Anguilla on the 25th April and found that this craft, an ATR72 of indeterminate age, also had a technical fault. Eventually we left San Juan and arrived on Anguilla, thirty nine and a half hours after starting our journey. We were pleased to be reunited with our dirty laundry.

So what is the moral of this story? Think carefully about which route you travel and which airline you choose to carry you. What looks to be an advantage in one respect should be balanced with the disadvantages. In our case, Air France, which we have used to travel to London on numerous occasions, operates a quicker route and has never broken down when we have been on board. We have been lucky. Perhaps with hindsight, the less generous baggage allowance would have been a small price to pay for a more comfortable trip after all.

The only good thing about our American Airlines experience was that the medical emergency showed that the crew were well trained and professional in dealing with such a problem. This should give confidence to all American Airlines passengers should they be unfortunate enough to be taken ill whilst in mid air.

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