Well, we arrived at the airport today, checked all our luggage, went through some interesting re-packing to avoid massive fines (and paid some), went through all the security and sat in the lounge only to find out our flight was delayed. This seemed OK, though our connection was a bit close, but we got a bit worried when they called all the business class passengers up to the desk and sent them away. Once the airline had taken care of business class they made the general announcement that our flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems, and everyone would need to find another flight or come back the next day. We called our US travel agent's emergency number, only to have it disconnect. We were not happy about this. It was 12:15 pm in Istanbul, but 5 am in Atlanta, so no one was in the office yet. It soon became apparent (amidst the general pushing and raised voices of passengers) that the airline wasn't going to rebook anyone's flights for today unless their travel terminated in New York. They told us that we would all miss our connections on any other flights, so anyone with connections would have to stay in Istanbul until tomorrow morning. We had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, we had all been saying we wanted to stay, but we had also already said our goodbyes and prepared psychologically to go home, so it was a bit odd. All in all, though, if there are mechanical problems with a plane, I'd much rather stay on the ground, even if it means a delay in getting home, and to be honest I'm happier chaperoning a bunch of students who are competent and confident about finding their way around and managing life in Istanbul than having them all run around NYC for the first time in the middle of the night.
The next problem was that the entire planeload of people had gone through customs and had already officially exited Turkey and had exit stamps placed in our passports. The Delta personnel re-routed us all back down into the arrivals area and back through customs again, where they took back the passports and canceled the exit stamps. This is apparently the official way to handle this problem here. It got us back into Turkey, but we have yet to see whether it will allow us to exit again. Presumably several hundred people will have the same problem tomorrow if it doesn't, though, so I'm hoping they have some sort of system for this.
Once we got through customs we retrieved our bags and a lovely Delta agent helped us receive a refund for surcharges on a heavy bag. We should be able to repack to avoid this when we go back again tomorrow. We were told that the airline was planning to put us all up at a hotel in Asia, but we weren't too excited about this because it would mean several hours on a bus each way and hanging out with a bunch of disgruntled airline passengers (we'd had a dose of the griping in the customs line already). We were also very blessed to have Ali and his office on our side. Even before we contacted them they were already tracking our flight and knew it had been canceled and had sent a van back to the airport for us with Hakan, who helped us navigate through the process of heading back to Istanbul. We had also paid for our apartments for a full 30 days (to get the one-month discount) but had only used them for 29, so we were all able to return to our original housing for another night. The students' apartment manager invited them all to dinner tonight, so we were greatly appreciative.
We have been told we are all booked onto the flight to New York tomorrow morning, and on to LAX after that. We are still in the process of confirming this with our travel agent, but will let you know as soon as it's confirmed. In the meantime, you should all expect that we will be arriving at LAX one day late at 8:26 pm.
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