Madinah, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, 1998-04-01(1) 03:00 local (Z+3)
I'm sitting here in the terminal at the Madinah airport. I'm tired—up 22 hours so far—frustrated, and angry. Misery loves company, and I've got plenty of it. Seventeen of us are here, fourteen flight attendants and three cockpit crew members. We have once again been had by Tower's incompetent and lying crew scheduling department. Strong words, I know, but true. The sad thing is that we're totally powerless to do anything about it. Right now our only goal is to escape from Saudi Arabia. Escape is, of course, too strong a word, we're not prisoners, but neither are we completely free to leave and escape is the word we use.
We're waiting for a Saudia 737 to depart to Jeddah at 04:25. Crew scheduling neglected to make reservations for us. Thus, we will get to Jeddah only if there's standby room on the airplane. Getting to Jeddah on that flight is critical to our escape; an hour and one half after its arrival a Tower 747 will ferry from Jeddah to New York. If we aren't on this 04:25 flight, we will miss the New York flight. If we miss that flight, it will be back to the Durrah Beach Resort for at least twenty-four hours for me.
For the flight attendants it will be worse. The ten day break in Hajj movement starts tomorrow, and they will be forced to remain in Saudi for the break. Tower has no obligation to get them out during the break. The airplane is ferrying to New York for maintenance; allowing them to get on the flight is a courtesy.
Putting me on that flight is expedient because crew screw—yes, that's what we really call them—forgot to make reservations for me on a regular Saudia flight, and for the next six days, all Saudia flights to New York are booked solid with expatriates and educated Arabs not wanting to put up with the added societal restrictions in Saudi during the formal Hajj ceremonies in Mecca. If I don't make the ferry flight, they'll have to get me out tomorrow on an indirect routing.
I shouldn't even be in Madinah. They assigned me this flight by slipping a piece of paper, a disposition, under my door twenty-four hours ago. It called for commercialling from Jeddah to Madinah, operating from Madinah to Abu Dhabi, back to Madinah, and then commercialling to Jeddah. I protested and was taken off the trip. But then, fifteen minutes before the hotel bus was to leave for the airport, was reassigned the trip with the excuse that the next f.o. up had not yet had legal rest. That was a lie. The flight engineer with me now had come in with that f.o., so obviously if the engineer had gotten legal rest, the f.o. that came in with him had as well.
Well, I need to lay down, and there's plenty of empty bench seats here on which to do that. Some of the flight attendants are leery of laying on them. There are lots of cockroaches around, and one flight attendant has been advising his peers that when he laid on the benches on a like trip a few days back, a cockroach crawled on his face. I'll take my chances. <g>