A momentary diversion

The plane that was supposed to become my flight out of Budapest last night was diverted to Vienna because of weather. Hilarity continues to ensue.

While waiting to land because of heavy rains in Budapest, the plane ran low on fuel and had to divert to Vienna. By the time the weather would have cleared, the crew there would have timed out and not be able to fly before a nights rest period, so the crew that would have flown back to Heathrow was put in a taxi to drive them to Vienna to bring the plane and its passengers here. By *that* time, that crew that would have flown out of Budapest would themselves time out. There wouldn’t be another crew flown in so that flight would have to wait until 2pm the next day to take off, and any earlier flights were supposedly booked full. I’ve had an unexpected extra night in Budapest on British Airways tab, but lost the points I used to pay for my reservation in London.

Despite having a 18.5 hour layover between my flight into Heathrow and my flight out, the 2pm departure from Budapest breaks that connection and the next possible connection to Portland is 7:45am the morning after that, so that means another night’s stay somewhere. I still haven’t determined is BA will pay for that one or not. In addition because I am checked in already for my original American Airlines flights they haven’t been able to re-ticket me yet.