Fog in Aberdeen, Scotland
During the years 1996 thought 2000, I made five trips to Aberdeen, Scotland and one trip from Aberdeen to Stavanger, Norway. Aberdeen is located on the northeast side of Scotland next to the North Sea. The cold wind off of the sea blows in daily mixing with warm air from the south which often makes heavy fog and ice on airline runways.
The trip from Houston to Aberdeen is a ten to twelve hours to Amsterdam, Netherlands with a two hour lay over and a hour and half trip to Aberdeen. On each of my tips I was always delayed by the plane coming from or going to Aberdeen. Trips from Houston on Sundays have always left around 4pm which made a Monday noon arrival time. I sleep like a cat which makes resting / sleeping on the plane trips darn near impossible for me. Over the last ten years, I have lifted weights along with running for my health which has given me big shoulders thus adding to my problems of getting comfortable on the tight airline seats. Some of you know the feeling of long plane flights from domestic travels. International travel baring more expensive seats is very uncomfortable.
On my forth trip, I was on the last "leg" going to Aberdeen from Amsterdam where the pilot announced that fog was to heavy to land in Aberdeen. It was 12:00 in the afternoon when he said this! We circle Aberdeen for around 45 minutes waiting. In the sky while we circled, the sun was shining bright and everything looked perfectly clear! After 45 minutes we then proceeded to Edinburgh to supposable wait for the fog to burn off and refuel. When we landed at Edinburgh, we waited on a side runway for around 30 minutes when the pilot announce that the airline was going to have to unload all of us for a bus trip to Aberdeen. The pilot said no bus was currently available but one would be located.
Since I have problems sleeping on planes as explained above, I usually bring a novel to read. I sometimes strike of conversations with fellow passengers but normally, I like just keeping to my self. Yes, this is not the normal Keith who makes friends everywhere, but I'm just that way on planes. Well, on this last leg, I ended up sitting next to two Scotsmen around my age. We had a good time visiting and after learning our predicament of now having to wait for a bus to be organized and taking a 3 hour bus ride to Aberdeen, I proposed an option to them which they accepted. I ended up renting a car and driving us to Aberdeen and with their local knowledge of roads which I didn't have, I knew it was a quicker and more comfortable option.
Our trip to Aberdeen took around three hours. From my past experiences of fog in Aberdeen, I thought how bad could it be for a plane not to land on a sunny afternoon. The two Scotsmen laughed at me when I was complaining in the car on the trip up. I remember getting around 30 miles away from Aberdeen after driving on a bright afternoon across Scottish country side to be totally shocked on what I saw. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon when we came into fog that was so thick, that it was like driving in a dark gray cloud.
The last 30 miles took us a hour to get into downtown Aberdeen. I dropped the two Scotsmen and drove to my hotel. I remember getting something to eat and sleeping from around 6pm till 7am the next morning.
This trip was almost as bad as the previous trip going home where we were delayed leaving Aberdeen because of iced runways where it took me around 24 hours to get to Houston via Aberdeen to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Chicago, Chicago to Dallas and finally Dallas to Houston. I always buy Johnna some Scottish crystal for a souvenir which I put in my carry on luggage so that it won't get broken. Crystal always shows up as a dark, un-penetrable object in security scanning systems. Because of my souvenirs, I always have to have my luggage searched. When you are "dead" tired, it makes the searching a bit almost intolerable even though you know the security representatives are just doing their jobs.