April 17, 2010
Dear Family:
So instead of putting this up on facebook and boring everyone to death, this is our status.
This morning, I went to check in for our flight and discovered that our flight from JFK to Moscow was cancelled for tomorrow, arriving Monday. The same flight was cancelled for today's flyers. My understanding is the problem isn't that Russian airspace is closed--it is that there isn't enough safe airspace in the adjacent countries for international flights to fly. This could change as the ash is projected to move continually east and Moscow may eventually close. The only flights that seem to be getting into Moscow are from Asia and many of those have substantive delays. I called Delta to rebook--the phone wait was more than an hour so I got in the car and went to the airport.
Barry at the Delta counter is my new best friend. He managed to rebook us on Friday via Minneapolis and Amsterdam. All of this could be for nothing if the volcano keeps blowing and we can't fly through Amsterdam. However, I have to be optimistic. The soonest we could fly on the same flights we were booked on (SLC-JFK-SVO) was Sunday. There were first class tickets on Friday, but it wouldn't really help us because the girls would still miss school. I decided I would rather avoid the nightmare connection in JFK and fly with two connections. Each of our connection times are fine. The only real downer about this is that we land at 6:30PM and Allyson has prom within HOURS of our arrival. If everything goes okay, we'll take her to the embassy to change clothes and then she can head over to the dance.
Parry was supposed to fly from Budapest to Moscow today, April 17. His flight was cancelled because the Hungarian airspace is closed. Parry and Rachel are booked on an 8:30AM flight, Monday, April 19 and should arrive in the afternoon. However, as the ash continually moves east, it is becoming more difficult to know if the flights will leave or not. He said he would call me before he goes to bed but so far, he hasn't. I know he was going to call the airline and get updates. If it appears that Russian airspace is closed or if there will be more delays, he and Rachel are considering taking a train from Budapest to Moscow that will put them into Moscow about a day after they leave (Monday, if they leave Sunday; Tuesday if they leave Monday).
I will need to reschedule my seminary teaching this week, hopefully I'll be able to trade with my co-teacher Katherine and teach next week.
The number one stresser for the twins is that the IB Art examiner was supposed to be in Moscow to evaluate their exhibits (Ally's appointment is 8:30 on Tuesday). There is a lot of question about what the school is going to do--if flights are a mess, it is possible the examiner will not be able to even get to Moscow in a timely fashion. Also, if we are all stuck, we are assuming a lot of the kids at school are also stuck as well as teachers. We are waiting for some kind of update from the school about how they are going to assess absences. There are at least two other families that I am aware of who are stuck here in the US--they won't be able to fly out until Thursday so they're only beating us by 24 hours. There is another family that I think is here and they fly stand by (their son is a Delta employee) so they're really in trouble.
We have at least three families from our branch who are in the UK right now and one family in Italy. These are the ones I know about.
We made the very spontaneous decision to drive to Boise tomorrow morning to see Jane. We will leave Abby there and she will fly home to SLC on Thursday. Ally and I will drive back to SLC on Monday morning. Our plan is to have FHE with the Leishmans.
So, mom and dad, I'll be happy to pick you up from the airport on Thursday. Sound good?
Love to you all
Heather
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To Lindsey Cox (Moscow, Russia)
From: Heather Jarman (Bountiful, Utah)
We leave Friday. Land on Saturday at 6:25PM. Poor Allyson. She has prom. We have no clue how we're going to do this ;-(
Abby, however, is going nuts trying to figure out if she can get to Oregon for a few days.
This life is so weird. Now Parry is worried that he is going to be stranded in Budapest if Moscow is closed
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From Peter Clayton (Geneva, Switzerland)
Hi Heather,
Thanks for using email instead of Facebook for those of us who still
haven't turned to the darkside.
Christina's Mom and Dad were supposed to leave tomorrow, Sunday the
18th, but Swiss air space will still be closed. Christina's sister,
nephew and I are supposed to fly out early Monday but it's not looking
like that's going to happen either. Let's hope Mom and Dad can leave
Thursday.
It could be worse, it could be raining.
Good luck,
Pete
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From Julie C Nelson (Athens, Greece)
For the first time in my life I'm glad I'm actually not going anywhere. . . even to America!
Wow, never thought I'd say that.
Good luck to all of you........ I hope you can all get where you need to go in a timely fashion. Heather it's going to be ok, don't stress too much about it since there is nothing more you can do. I'm glad you are planning some fun things for the girls. We'll pray for you to get out! You too Peter, Mom and Dad (and all the Alexanders!).
Thanks for the update.
Julie
P.S. Pete I still think you're a loser for not getting on facebook. :)
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From Parry Jarman (Budapest, Hungary)
Looks like Rachel & I will have an extended vacation in Budapest. Our flight for Monday just was cancelled and it doesn’t look good for the next couple days. We attended church in Budapest – the branch is so small that it just goes for two hours. Now need to decide if we attend the Budapest branch dinner on Monday night or just drive to Switzerland to visit family???
Parry
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From: Peter Clayton (Geneva, Switzerland)
Hi Parry,
My Mom and Dad are headed for interlaken on Tuesday if you want to
meet them there and of course there can always be room for more here
with us. My question is though, shouldn't you be heading north and not
west?
Good luck,
Pete
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From: Heather Jarman (Bountiful, Utah)
The reality is that Intel has a big facility in Munich. They could drive to Germany and Parry could work out of that office if this drags on too long. What about IB exams?!??!?!
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From: Parry Jarman (Budapest, Hungary)
Rachel & I found an apartment in Budapest that even has a washing machine. We are now booked on Tuesday morning flight and will see if this will fly. Lots of pressure in EU to just let the planes fly since the airlines are losing $100’s millions $’s every day.
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From: Jeff Clayton (on vacation in Geneva, Switzerland)
John and Linda are rebooked for Saturday. Charlene still doesn’t have a flight. We are still booked for Thursday….?? If we miss our Thursday flight it will take about a week to get new flights! Or we could buy a new ticket on Swiss Air and probably get back a day or two sooner.
I rented a car for Pete so we are taking John and Linda to Morges to the tulip festival and tomorrow Marge and I will go to Interlaken.
Stay tuned.
Much love,
Dad
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From: Parry Jarman (Moscow, Russia)
Tuesday April 20
Sheer chaos today. Glad you were not here to experience the travel drama today.
In Budapest, all the check-in counters were closed with the airport packed. The board showed all flights canx but Israel and Moscow. They opened a check in for Israel but would not check in anyone for Moscow. So we sat for 2 hours watching the board to show a check-in desk for Moscow. I finally went to Malev customer support at 8:40 when the flight still showed as leaving at 8:50. They said that the plane leaves in 10 minutes and we should have checked-in. I told the lady there is nowhere to check in and she didn’t care and was no help. The only check in counter had 100’s of people stacked to go to Israel. We then went back to the self check in kiosk and was somehow able to obtain a boarding pass this time (we had tried kiosks many times already since there was nowhere else to check-in). We then ran to passport & security with all our stuff. We knew that we would have to have my knives and Rachel’s suite case full of cosmetics thrown away at security but we willing if it meant we could make the plane. We put it all through security and nothing was flagged. I guess with all chaos, the security they didn’t look at things very carefully. When I got through security, I realized that I had lost my passport and boarding pass in all the chaos of getting through passport control & Security. I was going through all my bags and pockets and couldn’t find it. It was now 8:50 and just assumed that we were screwed and the plane was left and I had no passport or tickets now. After a few minutes I saw a security person walking by with a passport and noticed it was mine. I quickly convinced him that it was mine, took it and ran to the gate. We arrived at the gate and it was completely empty. It looked like we had missed our flight. It was now 9:00 and the monitors showed that the flight was still leaving at 8:50. So we sat down at the gate and waited for someone from Malev to show up so we could book a new ticket on whenever the next flight was. We waited 20 minutes and then the monitor showed that the flight was now delayed 40 minutes hour. This was strange since the gate was empty.
At around 9:30 a few people showed up along with a gate agent and then quickly started boarding with a few people there. They quickly boarded everyone on the plane and we left. I’m sure there are a bunch of people who were booked on our flight who are still in the terminal since they never opened a check in desk for the flight. We would still be in the airport if hadn’t tried the self check-in kiosk again at the last minute.
When we arrived at SVO, the passport control officers retained Rachel for 20 minutes. They weren’t going to let her in Russia because her visa has a typo error and has her passport # is off by one digit. After a discussion with all the supervisors they finally decided to let her Rachel and cancelled her current visa and said that we must obtain a new visa for Rachel so she can leave Russia. So Rachel is now an “Illegal Alien” in Russia. One more fun thing for Vista to work on for us this week.
We are now in the car with Andre and driving back to Rosinka. Andre must have had fun while we are away since the car is full of dog hair.
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From: Julie C Nelson (Athens, Greece)
WOW.
What a nightmare. Bless their hearts
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From Heather Jarman (Bountiful, Utah)
Talking Allyson off a ledge. I suppose we could have her take her first exam on May 4 at West High School. Certainly the IB in Switzerland gets the problem. Heard that the art examiner will *not* be traveling to Moscow. 30% of the school is still stranded in Europe and the US. The entire middle school PE department is in Belgium for a confererence and they're not due back until Friday. Prom?!?!?
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From: Jeff Clayton (on vacation in Geneva, Switzerland)
You ought to write a book – “Curse of Jarman Travel” it would be hilarious! It looks like we will be flying.
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From: Heather Jarman (In the US)
So far no cancellations though stupid Aeroflot won't let us check in for our last leg. The plan is to carry on Allyson's prom dress and prom gear (curlers, make-up, shoes, jewlery) and get ready in various airports. She can do her hair in the Minneapolis airport because we have a big layover, sleep to Amsterdam. She'll probably get dressed in one of the bathrooms and Sheremetevyo. We'll go straight to the Spaso House and hopefully she'll make it in time for dinner. Rachel or Tressa are supposed to have her ticket. Does Ally need a passport to get in? I'm assuming since it is the ambassador's residence that they'll check.
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PS: Allyson went to prom. After more than an hour in passport control, we cheated, got into the Russian line, cheered on by the multi-national crowd squeezing in the pseudo-queue for foreigners, and got our bags. Ally did her make-up in the car and traffic on Leningradsky, thank heavens, was doable.
1 comment:
Wow. Just wow.
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