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ICANN 48 travelers face chaos after plane crash

Kevin Murphy, November 16, 2013, 22:51:48 (UTC), Gossip

Nobody was hurt. Don’t worry.
But dozens of ICANN 48 attendees experienced huge delays, frustration and anger after a plane skidded off the runway at Buenos Aires, temporarily closing the whole of the Ministro Pistarini International Airport and sending travelers off on diversions totaling thousands of miles.
The early-morning “incident involving a plane”, which is what my own flight crew only ever referred to it as, did not cause any injuries and was apparently cleaned up quite quickly.
But there seems to have been barely anyone flying into Ezeiza on the eve of ICANN 48 yesterday that was not in some way affected.
Consider these stories, collected from the conference floor and Twitter, strictly anecdotal.

  • Several flights carrying ICANNers, due to land at around the same time, found themselves diverted to large cities in neighboring Latin American countries. Many found themselves sitting in hot metal tubes on airport tarmacs in Montevideo, Uruguay, Santiago, Chile and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil before finally turning back to BA.
  • One flight, carrying several delegates from Washington DC, was diverted to Santiago — a 2,000-mile round trip — not once but TWICE, leaving passengers ultimately delayed by well over a day. After the first diversion, and sitting on the Santiago runway for two or three hours, the plane returned to BA only to be told by air traffic control to stay in an hours-long holding pattern while the airport cleared up the backlog. Realizing he lacked the fuel (and apparently the foresight) to do so, the pilot decided to return to Santiago instead, where passengers eventually had to spend the night. They finally started rolling into BA this afternoon.
  • Another, diverted to Montevideo, apparently had to divert for a second time when, moments away from landing, the pilot realized the “runway wasn’t long enough” and had to pull up.
  • My own British Airways flight from London Heathrow, carrying at least a dozen ICANNers, was diverted to Rio de Janeiro, a three-hour flight away. After four hours on the Rio runway and another two sitting in the departure lounge without instruction or information we were finally told that we’d have to wait another eight hours before we could leave, on a newly scheduled flight getting into BA in the wee hours, some 17 hours late. Some stayed at the airport and waited it out. Business class passengers (you know who you are) were safely smuggled away to a hotel to avoid the scuffles that almost broke out over the pallets of flavorless refugee-camp MREs the remaining economy class passengers were offered to keep them quiet. Some of us jumped into taxis and hit Copacabana beach instead.

So it all worked out okay in the end.
Bwahahahaha!

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Comments (3)

  1. Acro says:
    November 16, 2013 at 11:26 pm

    What a lost opportunity to brush up on your Portuguese! If I were you, I would have stayed in Rio, pretending I made it to ICANN, all while enjoying the Ipanema beaches and nightlife. 😀

    Reply
    • Kevin Murphy says:
      November 16, 2013 at 11:35 pm

      Technically, as we never actually went through immigration, passport control or any kind of security when leaving the airport, I think we were illegal aliens in Brazil for about six hours. At one point I think I was offered yard work.

      Reply
  2. Dan says:
    November 18, 2013 at 8:22 pm

    Well, here in Brazil these kind of things also happen every day. This is South America, T.I.S.A. Nothing to worry about. 😉

    Reply

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