Sabbatical False Start!!!!! - I had a suspicion that something was not quite right when I arrived at the American Airlines check-in area. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of chaos, even for Newark Airport. There weren't nearly enough personnel to help people in economy check their bags, but not to worry, I am flying business class, so I can get in the priority line! Sounds good, right? That's why you pay the big bucks. Well, after about 15 minutes, the line hadn't moved at all. There seemed to be some major conversation going on between the three passengers at the desk and the agent. Finally, bags were loaded onto the belt and I breathed a sigh of relief. My relief was short-lived, however. The couple ahead of me were obviously booked on the same set of flights as I was: Newark- Dallas/Dallas- Sydney. Wait? What did I just hear the agent say? "I'm sorry, you are never going to make the connection in Dallas." Turns out that most flights out of Newark had substantial delays due to "air traffic volume". Argggghhhhh. Granted, there was never a lot of wiggle room in the original booking and I knew that there was a chance that I might spend the night in Dallas. So, I was good with that option. So much for that idea.
When I finally got to the harried agent she explained the situation. I could go to Dallas, as scheduled, but turns out there is no direct flight from Dallas on Tuesday, so I would have to fly on to LA, but there were no more business class seats on that flight, same for the flight out of San Francisco. I'm not flying in steerage, I said to myself. Then she said, I could get you a business class seat tomorrow on American, but you have to fly from JFK. A quick run-through of my options made it clear that if I didn't want to lose even more time in Australia, the thing to do was to bite the bullet and go to JFK. So that's the plan right now. Stay tuned!