Day 27 - Flight to Paris

I was picked up just a little after 5am outside the hotel by a Jordanian tae-kwon-do champion.  He was injured when an opponent broke his leg, so now he drives a car for foreigners so he can learn English.  He hopes to heal in time for the Olympics.

There was no traffic since it was 5am, but my driver decided to be the slowest driver I have ever seen in Jordan.  Instead of the 30 minutes quoted, it took an hour.  Now it was 6am and I had a 7:10am flight.  Without baggage and with a business class ticket, it should have been fine.  Instead, I found myself at a crazy airport with extra steps everywhere.  First, I had to go through a security screening to enter the airport.  Then, when I tried to use self check-in, but the machine ran out of paper.  When I explained this to the immigration guard, he told me to stand in the normal line with everyone else.  After moving 5% of the line in 10 minutes, I gave up on waiting.  I knew I would miss my flight.

I used the confidence trick again and it worked quite well.  "Hello, I am a Oneworld Emerald flying on a business class ticket for a flight that board in 15 minutes." "Oh, right this way sir."  Much better!  I had a boarding pass now, but the couple in front of me were arguing with the immigration officials and I was stuck behind them until 6:20.  Boarding was beginning as I rushed to the gate.  When I reached the gate, I had to go through security again.  I made it through to the bus area just in time to get on at 6:30.

I build a huge buffer in for every day I have a flight and somehow it always seems to go down to the wire anyway.  At least I made it on.

Below are the usual flight pictures.

Breakfast options.

Fruit and bread.

Salmon quiche, chicken sausage, hash browns, mushrooms, and hummus.

After that, I slept the rest of the flight.

On a fun side note, my seatmate was pretty concerning.  He was obsessed with the safety briefing card and asked a ton of questions.  Where is my life vest?  How will I open the door?  What is a water landing?  Is there a boat?  Where is the mask?

Who reads the safety briefing for 20 minutes?

This man had clearly never flown on a normal airline.  His passport was from Bhutan.