I was about to tell you that except for last minute flight changes travel with American airlines was uneventful. I received timely text messages with flight changes, happy smiling faces answered questions willingly, got priority boarding because my back was hurting and they even offered me a wheelchair. I assured them that wasn’t necessary.
The flights were on time and landed early at each leg of the journey. The longest layover was at LAX. Our flight from Philly arrived almost an hour early. Our flight from LAX to Maui had been changed from 2:30 pm to 5 pm so we had a long wait.
Finally our flight was called. It was a full flight since 2 other flights had landed late causing passengers to miss connections so they were crammed onto our flight until every seat was taken.
We took off on time and everything seemed to be business as usual until about the middle of the flight.
The window passenger in my row wanted to sit with her husband who was seated several rows back. The flight attendant went to ask if the other window passenger would swap seats but both the husband and his seat mate were sound asleep. That should have been the end of it but noooo. I had just fallen asleep when the attendant returned to say the husband and his seatmate had woken up and the seatmate agreed to swap with our window passenger. It didn’t matter that I’d just fallen asleep, The flight attendant woke me up so that my whole row could get out and allow the window passenger to swap seats. Finally everyone got settled in their new seats and I resumed my attempt to get a nap in.
I had just dozed off again when the announcement came in. Is there a doctor on board? Actually they asked if there were any licensed medical professionals who could lend a had with a sick passenger. Of course that got everyone’s attention. The cabin lights, which had been dimmed, were back on full. There was a commotion in the aisle. Apparently the passenger had passed out or fallen. She was eventually moved to the exit seats as there was more room and several doctors were attending to her. The airline was lucky. There was a doctors convention in Maui so they had ample assistance.
I saw them administer oxygen and a saline drip. Once we landed in Maui we stayed seated until the EMT’s met the plane had helped the patient disembark.
Luggage claim was very quick and picking up the rental car was also a breeze.
The only remaining snag was locating the resort. A 25 minute drive turned into a 1.5 hour search. My great directions were to look for a pink hotel but it was pitch black and nothing had any color!
After several frantic phone calls we finally found the hotel and got checked in. That bed felt so good! I was definitely down for the count but the travel part was over for now. We were on Maui!
