Let me just preface this post by saying, my trip began – literally – by locking my door and then taking 10 steps down my condo building stairwell … where I drop my eyeglass case and sunglasses irretrievably down a previously undiscovered crevice in the staircase, never to be seen again.
My driver, the affable Shane Tritsch, waited patiently for me to get a backup pair, and we are off. My flight is at 7 pm on Royal Jordanian, and I am expecting oil wealth extravagance the entire way.
Shane drops me at the Blue Line / Addison station for the short trip to O’Hare (it’s rush hour, so I take the El) at around 4:20 pm. I arrive at 5:05 pm, with plenty of time, right? The “??” listed on the big board next to my gate number was the first sign this would not be a normal flight.
By the time I walk to the shuttle to get me to the international flight Terminal 5, it’s almost 6 pm. And when I do get to Terminal 5, the verbiage next to my flight check-in status says “Closed.”
At the actual counter, there must be 300 people in line ahead of me. I do the unthinkable (for a good midwestern boy) – I see there are only two people in the First Class line, so I pull a New Yorker and cut in front of everyone and go there. Now then two other people cut in front of me, so I guess that’s karma. But when it was my turn, the agent didn’t say a single thing. He just took my bag and checked me in. (Disclaimer: I am NOT recommending this practice!)
It’s all downhill from there. Some idle thoughts on the Royal Jordanian experience:
- There are no functional kiosks for self check in at the airline Terminal counter. I started to ask one airline employee something before he cut me off, saying “It’s my first day and I don’t know anything.” I asked a second if chaos rules here and he said, “It’s ALWAYS like this.”
- At the actual gate, there is no boarding system, despite what is printed on my ticket (“Group B”). So, again, 300 people are just standing in a mass waiting for the gate to open. I go to an adjacent area and just wait for the mass to clear before I join the queue.
- After all sorts of hullabaloo about a visa for Jordan, not one single person asked to see my QR code which I had so proudly saved to a folder on my phone. I guess that’s just part of the chaos.
Now that I am actually on the plane, I take my aisle seat in row seven. In the olden days, I would try for the front of economy bulk heads, but on this flight they were filled with mothers, their children and bassinets.
The flight was packed. If you have ever seen any of the Chuck Norris epic “Delta Force” movies, where he’s liberating hostages in some made up Middle Eastern country, that’s what passengers all looked like. I know, “Don’t stereotype!” But they did, so I will. Watch the movie!
I sat with Nadji, a Jordanian American who owns a string of Circle K gas stations in the south, and Mohammed, a young Palestinian man who acted surprised when I said it was easy to remember his name. Interestingly, Nadji, who lives in Mobile, also says he goes by “Billy.”
The seats are uncomfortable and cramped. Mohammed, who Nadji said is looking for a wife, disappeared after take-off for several hours. I have no idea where he went, but maybe he found someone.
It is unbearably hot and I am sweating. I really think the pilots forgot to flip some switches, given the heat generated by 300 people, with nine people across each 3x3x3 tight row. We were served a meal and I settled in to watch “Elvis.” All I could think of was, “Why is Tom Hanks talking like that?” If you know what happens in the final 28 minutes, please don’t tell me. Does Elvis OD? Do NOT tell me!
Oh, and by the way, we took off at 8:10 pm for our 7 pm flight. Apparently the entire crew had been stuck in Chicago traffic (they should’ve taken the El!)
Exactly six hours into our 12 hour flight – so around 2 am, while we are trying to sleep – all our seat back screens turn blazing bright white for an announcement: “There is a medical emergency. Is there a doctor on board?”
Well, the emergency was sitting directly across the aisle from me. An elderly woman in a hajib was having difficulty breathing and almost fainted. No wonder, given how uncomfortably hot it was in the economy class cabin. A crowd of about 10 people fill the aisles around her, some just to gawk. But there was genuine concern. And not a single doctor! Imagine, 300-plus passengers and not one medical professional on board (See: Delta Force).
The poor flight attendant was consoling the passenger, as they wrapped ice in towels and tried their best to cool her down. And they did have oxygen. And some magical, wacky perfume bottle of eucalyptus that they waved beneath her nose. Slowly, she started to feel better. And, just as miraculously, the air in economy also starts to cool. Finally!
And I’ll add one thing here. On any international overnight flight that I have ever taken, there usually are multiple flight attendants distributing glasses of water ALL night long. On this Royal Jordanian (thumbs down) flight, not a single time. We had to literally beg for water, which may or may not arrive. Nadji actually went and got a few cups for our row. He never did get his earphones.
Somehow I manage to go back to sleep for another hour. But the cabin lights are soon back on. Mohammed also has reappeared from god knows where.
As we all awake, the first thing I do is look across the aisle – she’s ALIVE! Hurray!
We land in Amman around 4:30 pm, and I am in danger of missing my connection. There is a little man holding a sign with six names, including “SHUNDICH.” He would hustle us through customs to get on the next plane and 30 minute flight to Aqaba.
Somehow, I lost my little shepherd and ended up asking two other people where to go to find my gate. And let’s just say I brought way too much stuff for this trip. I think I have three charging cords for my phone, four pairs of shoes and, like eight books.
Apparently, everyone on this flight is going to the 85th birthday party of the richest man in Jordan, a Palestinian billionaire named Sabih Masri. Look him up. He was one of the people “detained” recently by the Saudis in their power purge.
I sit down next to a dapper gentleman named Mansour Nabulsi. He is the former Ambassador for Jordan to Egypt and the chairman of a company that owned 17 Sheraton hotels there. He shows me photos scanned to his phone of a much younger man with Anwar Sadat. And another with Yasser Arafat. I asked, “Do you have one with Gaddafi?” Nabulsi says, “NO!” then pulls aside a flight attendant to make me drink a Shaneeneh milk-yogurt drink. “It’s good for you!” Not bad.
There were at least five Americans on the Amman flight going to this same birthday party. One kept talking about the book he was reading, “Billion Dollar Loser,” about the rise and fall of WeWork. Another bragged about “getting her money out.” All of them, in their 40s and 50s, looked like they had come from a night of South Beach clubbing. Ready to hit the town! Apparently, Masri rented the entire Hyatt Regency mega-resort complex for three nights for this party of around 800. Nabulsi shows me a text on his phone: “Guests should arrive for a happy hour at 7:30 pm.” I tell him, “Maybe I will see you there.” He laughs.
Inside the Aqaba terminal, I am the last to get my bags – it’s a miracle my checked bag is here. I get pulled aside for, like, my fifth bag search of this journey and I am none too pleased.
“Smile!” the officer says. “You are in Aqaba now. It is a place to smile!” Really? They want to see my binoculars. And they have no idea what a CPAP machine is. This is the only place I have been where the bags are screened again when you LEAVE the terminal. Exasperating.
A US$22 ride to my hotel, Captain’s (featured in Lonely Planet), only leads to more frustration. The hotel does not have any record of my pre-paid reservation on Trip.com. I show them confirmation numbers, receipts, printouts, booking references. No matter.
“Please cancel the reservation and book again directly with us now,” he says. “We use Expedia and Booking.com, but we have received nothing from Trip.com.”
I have no idea how to cancel a pre-paid reservation on a site I do not routinely use (the hotel was not listed in Booking.com, which takes a hefty 15-percent cut). Unbelievably, after an online chat with some bot at Trip.com, one of their customer service 24/7 reps calls the front desk.
An HOUR AND A HALF later, I have a new reservation. Mind you, I have been traveling for 15 hours. I am not happy. The topper? My original US$157 bill for two nights was now US$167, despite asking for (and supposedly getting) a discount for my trouble. How did this happen!?
“Smile!” he says.
