June 4, 2008 – As I drove to the airport, I couldn’t believe that my true arctic adventure was about to begin! My adventure was more than a year in the making, when Greenland Tourism contacted me about doing some assignments in Greenland in sign language. I was thrilled and more than willing, but required that I’d be able to include Greenland deaf people in my assignments. David Letkiewicz of Wisconsin has the opportunity to join me to be my support crewman, and we planned on going to the Deaf school in Sisimiut. But school is out for the summer when I was making my trip, so it wouldn’t be worth a visit if no students were present. I had a unique request and replacement idea however, one much more exciting; to go hunting with a Greenlandic Deaf hunter in Innarsuit, less than 500 miles from the North Pole! Little did I know that before I would even leave America and enter the wild, I would undergo a mini-adventure in Airport hell!

AirGreenland up until 2007 had direct flights out of Baltimore, but those flights ceased and I now had to fly IcelandAir out of Boston. I would meet David and we would make the final leg from Reykjavik, Iceland to Greenland. With so few airports in America serving IcelandAir (Minneapolis, Boston, Orlando, NYC Kennedy), David had just a tough a flight as I, flying from Milwaukee to Minneapolis where he would catch meet me. He nearly missed his connecting flight as his flight was more than 40 minutes late to Minneapolis due to bad fog. Realizing he would barely make his flight, David asked the Northwest Airline agent to help him get to his gate since it was in a different terminal. Fortunately he did, because he barely made his flight, with the door closing behind him and the plane departing just seconds after! Worried that we would not arrive in Iceland and catch the same flight to Greenland, I was relieved when I got a page from David: “I made it, see you in Iceland!”

David certainly had an easier time than I did! My flight with AirTran had a lengthy delay due to severe storms in Baltimore, and I absolutely had to be in Boston to make my 9:30 flight with IcelandAir. I tried to get help from the AirTran ticket agent to make sure that I would be in Boston as soon as possible. He told me that I needed to call an 800-number to reach AirTran customer support. I told the agent I couldn’t make the call since I was deaf, and I was furious when he replied “Nothing I can do for you.” It’s amazing there are people like that who work in customer service that gave me that kind of response! I was fortunate that another ticket agent was willing to help me and I didn’t have to call the 800-number. When I saw that my flight was delayed from 5:15 to 7pm, I was ready to pull my hair! With so little time to check in the gate in Boston, I told the agent that I had to take the bag that I had already checked with me. She made sure that my bag was taken off the plane and I had to run to baggage claim to take my bag, go through security again, and get on the plane with my bag. The ticket agent told me that the flight was going to leave 3 minutes earlier at 6:57 and I didn’t have much time to get my bag.

Like on American Gladiators, I felt like I was running through an obstacle course. I ran through around passengers, through security, down the stairs, to the baggage claim where I had to wait several minutes for my bag to come through. When I finally picked up my “prize,” I went back through the obstacle course going through security, jumping over bags and passengers and breathlessly getting to my gate with time to spare… or so I thought. As I panted catching my breath, I waved with a smile to the same agent who had helped me, and she had a look of panic on her face. “Your plane is leaving,” she exclaimed!

I literally shouted, “WHY!?” The plane was leaving at 6:45, 12 minutes early! I was lucky that the plane had not closed the door even though the gate had closed, and I was able to squeeze on the plane as the last person. But as soon as the plane left the gate, we stopped and were parked on the tarmac due to mechanical problems. A 30-minute delay, would I even get to Boston?!

I was jittery the entire flight, with my eyes on the clock. I was happy I made the decision to bring my bag onboard, because I definitely would not have the time to meet my bag in Boston before checking in. I was happy when we landed at 9pm, but my content turned into unease as we taxied for 20 minutes, finally arriving at the gate 9:20. The race was on again! I sprinted through the plane, and with my bags weighing me down, I ran from Terminal C to Terminal E (International flights) to see all ticket counters dark except for IcelandAir. I had beads of sweat running down my face and expected the worst when I felt like an angel dropped out of the clouds. All IcelandAir staff were so relaxed and friendly, and they told me to relax! I didn’t have to run anymore, and I was going to make my flight! This is the third time I am flying IcelandAir (in 1999 and 2003), and it was as pleasurable as I remembered. I was the last person to settle in my seat, a very comfortable economy seat with my own interactive touchscreen to keep me busy in front of me. Then a real nice surprise came, as I found a familiar face on the plane; the very same flight attendant who worked my flight in 2003 was on this flight as well! We shot video of her signing “Welcome to Iceland” back in 2003, and she was very happy to see a repeat customer fly with her.

With a new plane, comfortable amenities, and fantastic service, the stress I went through with Baltimore and AirTran was finally behind me, and I am looking forward to meeting David in Iceland and making our way to Greenland! What a great time to zzzzzz.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Official Tourism & Business of Greenland