Third Time is a Charm
I initially planned on hopping on a flight to Tel Aviv on Saturday but then figured out that I could end up going one day early so I tried for the Friday night red eye. I was fourth on the list and it wasn't looking too good, but I thought that it would work out. I got to the airport early and low and behold, there were a couple of flights that were diverted to Atlanta due to weather at JFK. Those planes had passengers that were going to depart to Tel Aviv from JFK but instead were re-routed to ATL. So, now I was out of luck. They let 3 non revenue passengers on and I was fourth on the list. There were over 20 other non revenue passengers that were waiting for a seat for the past few days, so I guess I didn't have it that bad. I'll give it a try to next day.
This time, the list looked good enough so that I would get on. I ended up seeing the same couple from the night before and made friends with a few other familiar faces in the terminal all going to Tel Aviv for a summer vacation. The flight originally made to depart at 10:40PM ended up being postponed due to maintenance till 12:40AM but as we started to board, the right engine cowl was still wide open with just a lot of flashlights peering into the engine nacelle. I knew that it might be a little while longer until anything was going to be resolved. Well, by the time we board and I had a breakfast mimosa, about around 2:00AM, the captain came over the loud speaker and announced that the flight would have to be canceled. By then, it was almost a no go for, but when I got back to the house around 5:00AM, I saw that Delta had created an extra flight to accommodate the previous canceled flight at 11:00AM. I called up one of my buddies, made it to the airport on time and even bought an ID90 (airline discounted ticket) on Arkira air so that I could fly to Eilat, Israel once I landed. I boarded up along with the other people from the 2 previous tries and we headed out! Third time is a charm.