Ashley's Story

Because Ashley will never write this, Perry and I have decided this trip to Saipan needs told.  Ashley taught with me for one year in Saipan. Then I moved to Guam, and she would visit Guam, and I would visit Saipan.  She's lived several places since...Oregon, Maui, and Tennessee.  For a few summers, Ashley would travel with me. Then she moved to Maui. I guess once you live on an island you don't necessarily need a summer on another island.

Ashley was supposed to have arrived on Thursday night.  She got here Saturday morning.  32 hours late. 

Here flight from Denver started out like any flight.  Meal service begins quickly.  They want to stuff you, turn off the lights, and hope you'll sleep. (If only....)  At some point through meal service, the pilots detected an engine issue.  Of course, it's better to play it safe than get out over the Pacific and need to land on Midway, so they diverted the flight to San Francisco. 

What was supposed to be a couple hour delay, ended up being hours.  They had to change planes.  Crew times out, so they need a new crew. But the most mind-blowing part of the entire story, is they were delayed an additional hour because someone forgot to scan the bags.  WHO FORGETS TO SCAN THE BAGS?

They had already taxied from the gate...then sat...and sat....and sat.  Eventually, the pilot comes on that there was an issue at the gate, and they were just trying to get it resolved to take off.  Well, the issue was the bags weren't scanned before loading them on the new plane. So, they had to go back to the gate and rescan all the bags. More than one hour.  

Therefore, Ashley is 9 hours late arriving to Narita.  She should have already been in Saipan before she landed in Narita, so yes, she missed her connecting flight.  

Unfortunately, there are only three direct flights to Saipan a week from Narita.  That left the airlines with two options:

1) Send her to Guam the following day and then Saipan the day after that

2) Send her to Korea on a partner airline and then send her on the red eye to Saipan on a partner airline of the partner airline.

3) Keep her in Narita for three nights.

Of course, they chose the second because they only had to pay for one night hotel.

So, Ashley got to have a lovely stay in Narita. She described her room as a 1970s cruise ship cabin. (I took that as small and out of date.)

This is the only pictures she sent of the Old Narita Nikko, but it certainly has a lovely random column...just...there. 

After spending the night in Narita, she had a 4pm flight on Asiana to Seoul.  That was only a 3.5 hour out of the way flight.  She had to get her luggage, leave the airport, and then check back in on another airline. Her next flight was on JeJu at 11pm arriving in Saipan at 4am. (Of course, that flight was also delayed.) Jeju is the budge airlines. She didn't even get a drink, not to mention the meal she would have had on her original flight.

And those seat upgrades she paid for so not to have a middle seat...you guessed it. She got middle seats.