Ok, we made it home today.

should have been:
departure from CDG: 11:40am
arrival in PHL: 2:04pm

actual departure: 11:40ish push away from gate... sit in plane until wings up at 2:04pm
arrival in PHL: 5:15pm

We diverted north and over Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland.

We actually pushed away from the gate pretty close to departure time. The captain was given a slot of 2:30pm, but he wanted to tell the control tower the doors were closed and he was ready, so we pushed away knowing that we would be sitting on the plane for a while before taking off. He was hoping for an earlier slot since we were ready.

All in all, we were on the plane for 12 hours. bleck. The kids (ages 6, 8,10) did awesome! I was so proud of how well they handled it!

good luck to all upcoming travelers. There was a brief window of calm and things are happening again.

Welcome home, surfmom, and thanks for checking in.

With luck, and favorable prevailing winds, I'll be headed to Europe on Tuesday.

And I'm still hopeful.

Took 3 flights: May 7 Dublin-Oporto; May 11 Oporto-Girona; May 15 Girona-Dublin. Ash cancelled some flights at those airports on day before or day after all our flights but ours were ok. Phew.

I'm finally getting to report on what happened to us: Things had calmed down with the volcano and flights were mostly going smoothly, when on May 8th there was an announcement that the volcano was acting up again. We were to depart on May 9th. To make a long story short, our flight from Atlanta to CDG departed around 4am approx. 7 hours late and it flew around Iceland which brought it into CDG about 2 hours later than normal. In other words we missed our first day in Paris and the people meeting us at our apartment were not thrilled-----but we got there without any cancellations so, Hallelujah!
We were lucky that we were only going to Paris but many people on the flight were making connections and going as far away as the Middle East and India.

So, are we done with the volcano now?