Air France

We all unfortunately now know about the crash that happened on Monday somewhere in the Atlantic.
Nobody likes to ever think about an areoplane coming down, because lets face it....people take planes everyday, some even commute on them daily to work and think nothing of it.
We get on with life and tend to get blaize about the fact it won't ever crash.

If we do think about it, then it is only for a couple of days that we worry 'it might happen to me?' and then life just slips back to normal.

Today I read the newspaper and saw a story about the crash. It was listing people who had sadly lost their lives on the plane and what they had been doing in Brazil and why they were on the plane.
You had the couple who were on holiday, the scientist and his wife who were doing research, someone who had won the trip in an office contest and even a group of doctors who were taking a well earned break. But what really hit home to me and really shivered down through my emotions was the 11yr old boy who was flying back (on his own) to England to go back for the next term of Boarding School.

I went to Boarding School for 6 years in England and at the time my parents lived in several places around the world, in fact at least 40% of the kids at the school travelled by themselves to far away countries to spend time with their parents. That to us was life.
Now I think back to that time and realise just how lucky we were, we never had the headmaster have to tell us someone was not returning from so far away place due to a plane crash. I never once in all the time travelling with my younger brother thought about the worst thing to happen. I just got on the plane, put my headphones on, listening to the radio and waited for what ever crap awesome movie they decided to show us. (remember this was before tv sets in each seat!)

My heart goes out to those families, waiting in Paris for the flight that is never coming home.
It is everyones worst nightmare, and they now have to live it. I do so hope they are able to find the flight recorders to assit with the recovery for these families. It will be a mammoth task but here's hoping.

A Medal is Needed

I have just heard on the radio about the pilot in New York who just successfully landed an Airbus 320 on the Hudson River this morning, miraculously all 155 people on board survived!

WOW, is all I can think to say, I think he went above and beyond his job description and did an amazing thing.

He should feel pretty chuffed with himself just now.

I know there are going to be a lot of very grateful people to him for a very long while.

Well done that pilot.

Rescuing Grandma

Grandma has been in New Zealand for the last week helping my brother and family settle into their new life in Rotorua.
Today she is flying back to Dubai.
On the news in the last 24 hours there have been reports on the fact that Air New Zealand have grounded some flights due to safety issues.

'Air New Zealand grounded about 60 flights to check 17 planes after a safety "issue" was found during routine inspection of an Eagle Air plane last night. '
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/

It was only as I heard a news bulletin at 11am that it clicked that grandma was flying up from Rotorua to Auckland today, in a little plane, with Air New Zealand and more than likely one of the ones that had been grounded.
So I gave her a quick call and suggested she check it out, because as she was due to get a connecting flight up here in Auckland, she didn't have the time to get that flight if she only found out at 2pm that her 3pm flight was not flying (it is a 3 hour drive).
So she checked it all out and found that all flights were grounded until 2pm and they could give no reassurance that the 3pm flight would fly. So my brother and family suddenly found themselves driving to Auckland and back to deliver grandma to the airport.

So a good deed by me for thinking of her and getting in touch quick enough.

Unfortunately at 4pm I got a call from grandma to say she was at the airport BUT her wallet was still in the car with my brother and therefore she had no money!
No money means no leaving New Zealand as you have to pay a $25 departure tax before you can go through to the gate!
So off we rushed to the airport (20 minutes away) to rescue grandma again for the 2nd time today.
She was more worried about the fact that it was her wallet with all her cards and driving license, which she needs in Dubai, but unfortunately there was nothing we could do about it at that moment, so we paid for her to leave, we gave her some money for the flight and made sure she had everything she needed and then we saw her off.
Luckily for us, just after she had gone through another Emirates flight taxied down the runway to take off, so as far as Ben is concerned we saw grandma's plane take off!
Unfortunately due to the time at the airport we were never going to make it home in time to make dinner so ended up having to have dinner at the airport. Expensive and not the greatest actually.

So a wild day of rescuing grandma.
Luckily when we called my brother later he had grandma's wallet from the car, so at least it is not lost and we can now organsie getting it to her soon.

Parents Centre

The weekend has been very busy as we flew to Wellington on Friday so I could attend the National Conference of the organisation that I volunteer for Parents Centre New Zealand.
They are an organisation that hosts and organises Childbirth Education Classes and Parent Education classes once the baby is born. Check out their web site for more exact details of what is on offer.

The boys had a ball on the plane, although Ben decided once we were about 2 minutes up after take off that he had had enough now and that we could go down now, but after a little reassurance everything was good, it was only an hour long flight so nothing too hard, although Ben didn't like the blocked ears he got as we were coming down and there were a few tears there. Alex thought it was all good fun and as usual didn't want to be strapped into his seat, but we survived and I think they both enjoyed their little adventure on the plane.
Unfortunately I wish I could say the same for the shuttle to the hotel, this was organised by the conference and it took an hour to get us from the airport to the hotel, after doing a ticky tour of Wellington to drop others off first! So that meant that at 5pm we were still in the shuttle, with the boys being so good but quickly loosing it because they had had enough and were getting hungry and thirsty!
So it was great to get to the hotel and have them be so on to it, check in took 2 minutes and we were in the restaurant before they opened at 6pm, but that didn't matter, they were so good with the boys, even found out what the chef had in the kitchen that the boys could eat without us having to ask. The young waiter we had, Adam, was fabulous, he went out of his way to assist us and even predicted some of the stuff we would need and just appearred with it before we had asked. When you are travelling with a 2 & 4 year old, this makes all the difference to enjoying the time away or stressing out. Thank you Adam, you made our time away so enjoyable.

The room was small but suitable, it had 2 double beds and a lovely little kitchenette area, with dishwasher and washing machine!
Seeing as the boys were only going to be with us there for 1 night, it was just right.

They Have Arrived

So after a manic morning at work I finally found myself, with the family at the airport.
We had our signs ready and we raced upstairs to the big windows to watch the plane land.
We were lucky enought to catch it land and taxi all the way to the gate right in front of us.
So the boys got to see the plane right up close and watch all the men doing the work as they emptied the luggage, checked everything and prepared it for the next trip.

Grandma and Grandad have been arriving at the airport so much in Ben's life that the sign we have to wave when they arrive is preprinted and laminated! Stuck nicely on a stick, it gets loads of remarks when ever we go to the airport.
People always smile to see Ben with his sign, they think it is so cute.

Here they come, nearly at the gate.
Unfortunately it was all a little emotional when we finally saw them face to face, so didn't manage to get any pictures, but had a lovely big cuddle, with tears, from my baby brother.

So great to finally have them here.