I started my morning at 3:45 with a Lady Taxi to the Riga Airport. At first glance, you think this might be some seedy call girl service, but it really is what is says. A taxi company with female drivers. It was strange to be checking out of the hotel at 3:45am and see the sun had already risen. That's summer in the Baltic's for you. I can only imagine how dark it is in winter time.
We would be traveling to New York via Warsaw, Poland on LOT Polish Airlines. Once we arrived in New York, most of the kids were then supposed to connect to other flights to various cities in the United States. There would be other flight attendants waiting for us in New York to escort them on the last legs of there journey.
I had two Latvian chaperones making the trip with me. Arnis was the leader of the group. He is a Social Worker and runs one of the state run orphanages. Vitta, my other chaperone, is a school teacher who works with a local organization that supports orphaned kids. They both proved invaluable to me. They spoke good English and served as my translators, although most of the kids had some basic understanding.
Here is the group posing before we headed thru security. In addition to our group, there would be another large group flying direct to New York on a later flight, as well as the group that Ingrid was taking to Atlanta. The young man on the right of this picture is Viesturs. He was real standoffish with me at first, but by the end of our journey, he had opened up a little and was more talkative. He was 16 and the oldest orphan and was actually going to spend a year in the states on a student visa. The youngest was little Roberts, down on the first row. He was 5 and was traveling with his sister Zibela. All in all, there were several sets of siblings. Kind of heartbreaking when you realize that all they really have in the world is each other. The blond girl next to Viesturs was Agnija. She was 13 and spoke English very well. She had learned all of her English from Facebook and MTV.
One last picture on Latvian soil as we boarded our LOT jet for Warsaw. This was a quick flight at just over an hour. For most of the kids, this was their first trip on an airplane.
Little Roberts was feisty, but with a face like this, how can you get tired of him?
We were scheduled for a 6 hour layover in Warsaw, which is kind of long. The kids handled it well. However, things started to go downhill pretty quickly when at 12:30, the scheduled departure time for our flight to New York, they announced the flight was delayed until 5:30pm. This was bad news. All but two of the children were scheduled to make connecting flights that evening in New York and with our new arrival time 5 hours later, they would all misconnect. To make things even more complicated, they were all booked on separate domestic tickets, so LOT could not assist me in any of the rebooking. And to further complicate matters, we were mixing with the other group that was flying direct upon our arrival so that some of the kids from my group and some of the kids from their group were making domestic connections together. Arnis was to take two of my kids to Chicago along with 5 kids from the other group. An American Airlines Flight Attendant was taking one of my kids to Denver along with 4 from the other group. The logistics of how this was going to play out now with our delay was all messed up.
I could not find a pay phone in the airport so I had to bite the bullet and use the iPhone. I called Margaret, my contact at Airline Ambassadors, at what would have been 5:30am her time, in Atlanta. In retrospect, I had the easy part of this fiasco because all I had to do was sit in Warsaw and wait. Margaret had to spend her entire day on the phone with New Horizons and work to make new arrangements for everyone.
By mid afternoon everyone was getting exhausted. Some of these kids had traveled for 3 to 4 hours by car to Riga to make the flight and they finally passed out. LOT was not the best at keeping us informed (I'll remember that the next time someone tells me my airline is short on information... I'll tell them to fly to Poland!).
Finally about 3pm they brought hot meals for everyone. Most of the kids were very well behaved with the exception of Andris. He was a little monster. He figured out if he kept going back to the counter, and showing his boarding card he could keep getting food. I think by the end of it he had taken three meals and 5 cans of soda.
The flight load must have dropped off with the delay because we were not full. I was seated in the forward part of the cabin and the kids were more in the middle of the plane. I had the seat next to me open which was nice for a 9 hour flight. I slept most of the way to New York. I did wake up to find the little monster Andris trying to go thru my bag. Good thing I woke up when I did or I might have lost my wallet. I think I had it pretty good overall though. Ingrid, the other escort, had two kids screaming all over the plane, hitting the cabin crew and mocking a disabled person. I was lucky if all I had to deal with was this little grifter.
Our arrival into JFK was a bit chaotic as everyone's itineraries had been changed around. New Horizons had contacted a church they are affiliated with on Long Island and they came to the airport and would be providing the kids and chaperones with a place to stay overnight. The two kids who were staying in the New York area, Djimistris and Kati posed for a photo with their host family. They look kind of shell shocked.
I was also lucky enough to have a young man named Christian meet our group at the airport. He is an American Eagle Flight Attendant and new to the Airline Ambassadors group. He was very helpful in making sure everyone got to where they needed to be.
When it was all said and done, I hopped in a cab and made my way over to a hotel near LaGuardia Airport. I was able to catch the jumpseat out of LGA for DFW the following morning.
Margaret and I always joke that my Airline Ambassador trips have all the drama and this one certainly was full of it. But in the end, everyone got to where they needed to be, albeit a day or two behind schedule.
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