The majority of our travel day to Santa Fe was spent on a plane. A trip that was supposed to take 4 hours ended up taking us about 8, solely because a passenger decided that it was 1968, and it would be a good idea to try to smoke in an airplane lavatory. What?!? This is not Pan-Am! Our planned itinerary was to fly from Charlotte to Houston with some passengers deplaning in Houston. Then, the plane would continue on to Albuquerque. About 45 minutes into our trip, the smoke alarm began to sound in the lavatory at the rear of the plane. The passenger in the lavatory at the time was just a few rows ahead of us, so we were able to hear some of the ensuing discussions. She claimed that it just malfunctioned while she was inside. The flight attendants later told us that the smoke detector was "doing its job", but they couldn't prove it, because the passenger wouldn't admit to it. Since they couldn't prove the cause of the smoke alarm, they had to divert our plane to Birmingham, Alabama. Welcome to Birmingham, y'all!
It took several hours to land the plane, have the fire department inspect everything, help customers who were missing connections, etc. Finally, we departed for Houston, had a short layover, and headed to Albuquerque. Our family had to sit on the same small plane for 8 hours, as we weren't scheduled to deplane until New Mexico. We finally arrived at our hotel in Santa Fe a little after midnight Eastern Time, exhausted, hungry and more than a little grumpy. The moral of this story is -- NEVER SMOKE IN PLANES, PEOPLE! E-cigarettes set the smoke detectors off, too. Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day.
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