It was the end of May 2010 and I was going with five other people on a medical mission trip to Kenya, right after graduation from my nurse practitioner program. We were flying Delta from Atlanta to Nairobi via Amsterdam. About an hour or so after we took off, the captain got on the PA system to tell us that we would be returning to Atlanta because the Amsterdam airport was closing due to ash from the volcanic eruption in Iceland. UGH.
We landed back in Atlanta and the airline gave us those toiletry kits with a humongous T-shirt. One member of our group had the idea to use our Sharpie markers to write, “My plane got turned around… and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!” on the shirts. We didn’t end up getting to Nairobi until two days after we were supposed to, because of that darn volcano.
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I remember praying that that volcano would force me to spend a couple of extra days in England that summer but no such luck.
You do realize it’s a bloody volcano, don’t you? Neither you nor the airline had any control over it.
Foolish humans. If you sacrifice maidens I don't make the ground spit fire.
Fun fact: When an airplane flies through a volcanic cloud, several bad things happen
-The plane gets covered in Saint Elmo's fire. As a result, no radios.
-Volcanic ash gets drawn into the cabin
-Ash builds up on turbine blades, clogging up the turbines and disabling the engines
-The front of the airplane is damaged. The windshield becomes impossible to see through.
I'm sure you don't want any of those things to happen to an airplane, especially with you on it.