Dealing with customs in New York wasn’t too bad. We weren’t originally sure if we were going to have to retrieve our bag and recheck it since we were likely switching terminals like last time. The customs agents confirmed that we would, but all of that process went quickly. We walked to the other terminal building and found the Delta check-in counter. I used the self service machine and got our boarding passes, so all we had to do was drop our one bag. For whatever reason, the agent couldn’t get the ticket to print, so we had a slight delay. Nothing major yet.
From there, we hopped in the security line. Everything for the entire terminal was filtering through two X-ray machines and a single metal detector. An agent off to the side was calling for people with earlier flights and pulling them out of the main line and into the priority line so they could make their flights. “Finally, someone doing something smart.” Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3:55. She started by asking for 3:30 departures and earlier. Next was 3:45 and earlier. Finally, she was calling for 3:55 and earlier, and when we jumped the line we still moved ahead of about 10 spots in line. No major problems at security this time, but our flight had already been boarding for a while.
It didn’t take long for us to realize that our gate was actually in yet another terminal. We needed to take a shuttle bus to get there (at this point we had about 25 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave). We found where the shuttle was supposed to board, but they were telling people to take a seat and we’ll call you when it’s ready. They finally let us on and the shuttle drove to what seemed like the far end of the airport. It was interesting to be down on the tarmac level, but I couldn’t enjoy it much due to the circumstances. By the time we reached the desk at our gate, they were announcing that all ticketed passengers needed to board now for an on time departure (ha!).
We finally made it to the plane and found our seats occupied by a father and his two kids (probably three and four years old). He somehow managed to get three entirely separated seats, plus I just realized that his wife is up in first class. Between us and one other passenger, we were able to put him with his kids and keep Amber and me together.
Once we were all situated, we proceeded to sit on the tarmac for an hour because of “evening congestion.” Our nice long layovers today are both going to end up being annoyingly short. My least favorite thing about air travel – hurry up and wait.