Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?

So I finally have all my travel plans set and booked for my business trips this coming July and August. And I find myself not extremely excited for the flights themselves. You see, I tend to have really bad luck when it comes to airplanes and airports. Indeed most of my flights have been eerily reminiscent of the movie Airplane: "There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?"

I have many stories to illustrate this bad luck but I'll just give you 4 . . .

1. While I was in college, my family went on a two-week vacation to Dana Point, California. Because of work obligations I was not able to go the entire time and instead flew down for only part of the trip. When I arrived at the Burbank Airport to fly back home, I was told that my airline, Winair, had gone under and that all flights had been cancelled indefinitely. Luckily I found an available Delta flight out of the Orange County Airport and headed up there. But just as I settled into my seat, the captain announced that there was an engine problem and that they would be transferring everyone to a flight out of LAX instead. We were given back our checked luggage and loaded into vans headed for Los Angeles. Twenty minutes into our drive, the freeway was closed to accommodate a high-speed chase between a robbery suspect and the police. The chase resulted in a crash, which forced us to sit on that closed freeway for nearly three hours and miss our LAX flight. When we did finally get to the airport, Delta quickly booked us on another flight, with a layover in Las Vegas, and I (thankfully) made it back to Salt Lake.

2. On my return flight after a family reunion in North Carolina, the captain told the passengers to brace for some turbulence. He wasn't kidding. It was so bad that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was throwing up. Instead of doing a drink/snack service, the flight attendants went up and down the aisle handing out new barf bags and collecting used ones (that is when they themselves we're throwing up). And the horrible turbulence lasted the entire 3-1/2 flight. At about hour 2 they ran out of clean barf bags and instead handed out plastic garbage sacks and emptied-out potato chip bags. By the time we landed in Salt Lake, the inside of the plane smelled like death. Once all the passengers were off, the plane had to be disinfected (and fumigated) before going back into service, delaying a bunch of flights.

3. On the way home from the mission field I had a layover in Dallas/Ft. Worth. After a short break, I boarded my connecting flight for the final leg to Salt Lake. Not long after all the passengers were seated and the flight attendants had readied the cabin, two armed officers boarded the plane and walked straight towards me, never loosing eye contact. They asked me to remove my seat belt and go with them. One walked in front of me. One walked in back of me. (At this point I was freaked out enough that I grabbed the arm of another sister missionary on my flight and forced her to come with me. Missionaries are supposed to always remain in twos, right?) They guided me off the plane and detained/questioned me under suspicion of Anthrax possession. Once they tested the white powered they found in my checked luggage and realized that it was vanilla protein powder, they released me.

4. When I went to New York City during my junior year at BYU, my flight had a layover in Chicago. It was February and while takeoff from the Salt Lake Airport wasn't horrible, the same couldn't be said about the landing conditions at Chicago O'Hare. It was dreadful. It was snowing, the wind was howling, and the runway was riddled with ice. So when we touched down and the pilot hit the breaks, the plane slid into a 180 degree turn and skidded down the runway completely backwards.

So you can see why I may not be looking forward to the 16 hours of flight between Salt Lake and Sydney, Australia and the 12 hours of flight between Salt Lake and Stuttgart, Germany. So much time for things to go oh so wrong! :)