This Is The Captain Speaking

No good news will ever follow an airplane announcement that starts with these words - "This is the captain speaking from the flight deck. Due to fuel problems ...."

We are now in a beautiful part of the country for the wedding of a friend's son. It's called the Northern Neck area of Virginia. Specifically, it's Lancaster County.  

Our short flight yesterday to Richmond, Virginia, boarded in Cincinnati at about 1:30 for a 2pm departure. No problems. We were on a small Delta commuter flight that wasn't quite full. It pulled away from the gate, then nothing happened. Eventually we were told that a storm in Richmond was preventing planes from landing there, but the storm was expected to pass. So we were to taxi to a waiting area and take off once the airport was clear. No getting off the plane. 

We waited about an hour, and took off. But once we got near Richmond a new storm rolled in. It turned out that the entire East Coast was slammed with storms, and planes were being diverted to safer airports for landings. In our case the captain came on and revealed that we were low on fuel (I didn't really need to know that) and we were being sent to Norfolk to land. The deal was that we'd fuel up, get new paperwork, and go back to Richmond where the storm was clearing out. Again, no getting off the plane. 

That time we sat for almost, but not quite, an hour and a half. Don't some penalties for the airlines kick in after an on-board wait passes an hour and a half? The flight back to Richmond took about twenty minutes. Once we got off, we'd been on that commuter jet for about five hours. Throughout the whole deal both passengers and crew handled the situation pretty well. 

We grabbed our rental car at the Richmond airport and got to our 7pm wedding rehearsal dinner at 9pm. They saved food for us.