盘旋在成田机场上空

On January 6, 2007, the weathers in both Boston and Chicago were about 70F, it were abnormal warm in January for both Boston and Chicago. There are not issues at all for taking off and landing in Chicago and Tokyo. Due to an urgent case, I had to go to HsinChu, Taiwan, and my route was Boston, Chicago, and Taipei.

After approximate 14 hours flight against heavy wind, we were very closer to Narita Airport, and were 30 minutes late. I was starting to worry about not making the connection. Since I am in and out of Narita Airport many times, knowing very well about the procedures (taking all the belongings, walking through a very long pass way, checking through security, walking back through a long-distance, re-boarding), to make connection in Narita Airport, minimum requirement is 40 minutes. And I would have about 45 minutes if our flight were landing on the delayed schedule. Just this moment, our captain announced that due to heavy wind at Narita Airport, all arrival planes would be kept apart than normal during landing for the safety purpose, and our flight was told to be at holding for 30 minutes at least. “Shit”, I said, definitely would miss the connection.

To understand what was going on, I plugged my headset with noise cancellation capabilities into channel 9 to monitor the airport traffic while I was counting the numbers of circles above the airport at the same time. After the 7^th circles, our captain questioned the controller about our landing status. The controller (a Japanese lady) replied that our flight was waited at the 9^th position for landing. At this moment, the captain stated that our flight was operating at minimum fuel, and requested the landing ASAP. This was the first time in my whole flight experience that we were running out of fuel. She replied to him “wait a second”, and luckily she directed our captain for an immediate landing. It was thrilling moment. Landing process was smooth.

It only left 15 minutes for connection, and as soon as door opened, the ground crew told us that we definitely missed connection. About 7 of us, and all of us were transferred to JAL. Since JAL is not partner with UA, I lost privilege as 100k member, and Business class was downgraded to economic. JAL was delayed another 80 minutes due to the wind. One of JAL flight to GaoXiong (Taiwan) was cancelled due to the collision between airplane and a bird.

At least, I were moving ahead. At least, I arrived Taiwan on supposed day.