On De­cem­ber 19 my jour­ney to Trinidad start­ed at 5.19 am on the New Jer­sey tran­sit line to­wards New York. In the cold win­ter winds, I cheer­ful­ly dragged my suit­cas­es along be­cause by 4.30 that af­ter­noon I would be in my pre­cious home­land run­ning in­to the arms of my loved ones. I could al­ready al­most taste the three dou­bles with slight pep­per on my tongue. How­ev­er, fate (and Caribbean Air­lines) had oth­er plans.

Af­ter two train rides and a line through se­cu­ri­ty, I was post­ed at my gate at 7.16 am, a safe three hours be­fore my 10.30 am flight, Caribbean Air­lines 501. At the gate, the at­mos­phere was ripe with Christ­mas vibes. As I greet­ed fel­low pas­sen­gers, we spoke of all the pastelles and black cake we were go­ing to oblit­er­ate and all the fam­i­ly mem­bers whose homes we'd be parang­ing.

A cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive's voice cut through all the ole talk and said that our flight was slight­ly de­layed. No-one re­act­ed be­cause truth­ful­ly, I don't think any­one cared. As long as we got to Pi­ar­co with­in a rea­son­able time frame, we'd be fine.

Board­ing did even­tu­al­ly start at around 11 am and by noon we were buck­led in and ready to go. Hav­ing not been home for Christ­mas in the past three years, I was over­whelmed by an­tic­i­pa­tion and sheer glee. We nev­er took off. Af­ter 30 min­utes of sit­ting still, we heard the pi­lot's voice ex­plain­ing the there was a prob­lem with the hy­draulics sys­tem on the plane, that he had alert­ed a main­te­nance crew and that it should be a quick fix and we'd be in the air soon. I thought to my­self, "No wor­ries; life hap­pens."

Lit­tle did I know that this pi­lot would make me eat my words. Fast for­ward to three hours lat­er and we're still sit­ting in the air­craft, wait­ing, just wait­ing with no word from any­one about what was go­ing on. Hun­gry and thirsty, we asked for an up­date from the flight at­ten­dants. The pi­lot re­turned his at­ten­tion to us and in­formed that he would let us off the air­craft in­to the ter­mi­nal and that the air­line would pro­vide us with meal vouch­ers so that we could eat and re­lax a bit while the plane was be­ing ser­viced.

As a Tri­ni, you would ex­pect a bit of grum­bling from the pas­sen­gers, but oth­er than a few peo­ple suck­ing their teeth and com­plain­ing of be­ing tired, we calm­ly filed off of the plane, ate, and await­ed an up­date. The Caribbean Air­lines rep­re­sen­ta­tive said that we'd have more in­for­ma­tion in an hour. Three thir­ty came and went and then she said we'd know what was hap­pen­ing at 6 pm; and so the sto­ry goes un­til 8 pm when we were told that we'd be able to re-board the plane.

I've lived in the US for al­most eight years and I have nev­er seen a fleet of Caribbean peo­ple load an air­craft so quick­ly and so ef­fi­cient­ly. I al­lowed my­self to fan­ta­sise about still be­ing able to find a late night dou­bles ven­dor when we land­ed. I texted my old­er broth­er who had been primed to pick me up at Pi­ar­co and told him that I'd be home around 2 am.

Again, I didn't care that it was nine hours lat­er than planned. I buck­led up, leaned in­to my seat and wait­ed for take-off. Two eeri­ly qui­et hours went by and the plane didn't move. A pas­sen­ger, who be­came our free­dom fight­er through all the en­su­ing mad­ness, po­lite­ly asked a flight at­ten­dant if every­thing was ok and if the pi­lot had ar­rived.

The flight at­ten­dant said that some pas­sen­gers were miss­ing and so we were wait­ing. I looked ahead sus­pi­cious­ly be­cause un­less we were ex­pect­ing Pres­i­dent Richards or Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, I couldn't imag­ine wait­ing two hours for a pas­sen­ger. That's when all hell broke loose.

To a calm crowd, the pi­lot came on the speak­ers and said that there was a le­gal­i­ty is­sue aris­ing from the amount of time they had spent at the gate and that he wasn't sure whether or not we'd be able to take off that night. Si­lence. And then up­heaval. "Didn't you know this be­fore you cor­ralled us back in­to the air­craft like cat­tle?" "Don't you think we had a right to know ear­li­er?"

In re­sponse, the pi­lot again came on the speak­ers, yelled at us and ba­si­cal­ly said that we were be­ing pet­ty and over-re­act­ing. He went on a minia­ture tirade about al­so be­ing up at 5 am, leav­ing his wife and chil­dren at home and then he yelled: "How would you like it if I took this plane up and got tired and crashed it in­to the At­lantic?!"

I was ap­palled! And so were the par­ents who had to try with­out suc­cess to rid their chil­dren's minds of the im­age of their flight crash­ing in­to the deep, dark ocean.

Off the plane and in­to the ter­mi­nal we went to wait for a Caribbean Air­lines rep­re­sen­ta­tive to grace us with his pres­ence. Af­ter 45 min­utes went by, I had had enough and with my lack of sleep and lack of food, I blew my gas­ket. I rant­ed about the ab­solute lack of re­spect by Caribbean Air­lines for its pas­sen­gers, the cal­lous­ness they showed to­wards the chil­dren who had prob­a­bly suf­fered the most, and the dis­grace­ful at­ti­tude of the air­line to make me stand there and wait at 10 pm for a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to an­swer sim­ple ques­tions about the next steps, like what the pos­si­bil­i­ties were for get­ting home any­time soon or where I would sleep or what was hap­pen­ing with my lug­gage.

Fi­nal­ly, at around 12:30-1:00am (20 hours af­ter I had tak­en my first train), the air­line cart­ed us off to a ho­tel and en­sured that we'd be able to leave on a 10:30 am flight on De­cem­ber 20, which we did.

Our new flight crew was amaz­ing and both my lug­gage and I ar­rived safe­ly at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al. I am a ridicu­lous­ly proud Trin­bag­on­ian and any­one who knows me even re­mote­ly will vouch for that but I refuse to be proud of in­com­pe­tence and a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty by my air­line. Caribbean Air­lines showed ab­solute­ly no re­spect for my busi­ness and my time.

As a stu­dent, it's no small sac­ri­fice to buy a tick­et to Trinidad for the hol­i­days but I do it be­cause my heart and my navel string are plant­ed deep in Trin­ba­go's soil. My dear­est Caribbean Air­lines, you must ap­pre­ci­ate that our loy­al­ty, much like your tick­ets prices, does not come cheap.