We made our way from California to New York and then head for Istanbul

Western Turkey - Personal Journal
Day 1 - Wednesday, 1 April 1998

The alarm sounded at 3:30 am. Taking care of last minute tasks kept us from getting to bed as early as we had meant to and the excitement of the impending trip made for fitful sleep so we didn't feel very rested when the alarm went off. When it is 3:30 am on the west coast of the US it is 1:30 in the afternoon in Istanbul. The long trip will keep us out of bed until about 8 pm the next day in Istanbul. That means it will be 30+ hours before we can go to bed again. Do we really want to get up? Is this trip necessary? It's mostly prepaid. We have to go.

We left the house at 5 am for the airport. Our Delta flight #1549 departed on time at 6:40 am and arrived in Salt Lake City at 9:15 am. Here we changed to Delta #1424 which pushed back at 10:00 am, 10 minutes late. Before we reached the runway the captain announced that there was a hydraulic problem and taxied back to the gate. The problem turned out to be a switch which was soon replaced. We pushed back a second time at 10:54 am, now an hour and 54 minutes late. We finally took off at 11:04. Will we get to JFK in time to make our trans-atlantic flight?

Our 757 touched down at JFK at 5:11 pm after a flight of 4 hours 7 minutes. The weather was nasty causing the descent to be a bit rough. As we walked off the plane and entered the gate area we saw a young lady holding a sign with our name on it. She asked us to follow her to the next gate. There we learned that we had been upgraded to Business Class. YES! Our 767, flight #72 pushed back at 6:34 pm and lifted off at 7:16 pm on our way to Istanbul! Pinch me. Can this be real?