When departing MSP International Airport for international travel, they request you check-in two hours ahead of your flight time. We're such overachievers that we ended up checking in five hours ahead of our flight, without even trying.
Let me back up. In a fashion unheard of for us, Josh and I made fantastic time this morning. Dropped off the kids, stopped at Target, and got to my friend's house for our airport ride 20 minutes ahead of schedule. A quick ride to the airport later, we were checked in just after 10:30 - three hours ahead of our 1:25 flight to JFK.
We had a nice lunch at TGI Fridays before heading to our gate. The plane boarded quickly and smoothly, and I debated exactly how many life-size Easter Island heads I could order from Sky Mall for Jeff and Diane's garden.
Right on cue: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, we have a problem with an engine, and we're not sure if we can fly this plane or not, but we may be switching to another or fixing it. Either way we're looking at a delay of at least an hour."
Our time between flights at JFK was an hour and a half.
Two minutes later, we were informed that an engine was out and "this bird isn't gonna fly." (yes, that is a direct quote). The flight crew instructed us to return to the airport gate and await further news.
A Delta service representative assisted us in getting set up on a new flight - first a non-stop to London that left at 9:45 pm. Despite our overwhelming joy at the thought of sitting at MSP terminal 1 for another 8 hours, when they gave us the option to take a flight to JFK at 3:25 with a flight to London at 9:00 pm, we took that option.
We'll land in London tomorrow at 9:30 am instead of 7:00 am, which will work in our favor avoiding rush hour on the London subway system.
