Going, Coming Home, 1991

(August 9 to October 25)

Pan American Airways was about to go out of business at this time (and did before we returned), and Lufthansa was the only airline flying non-stop from Los Angeles to Frankfurt.

Lufthansa's ticket prices and restrictions were the same as anyone else had, and that’s not good. If we would be gone for only three months or less, and if we knew exactly what day and hour we were going to return, round-trip tickets would be about $900 or so, each. But since we might have to (or want to) return earlier or later, we paid $1,425 each for that privilege. Doesn’t make us very happy, but if we bought the $900 tickets and then had to change the return date, we would not only lose all the money paid for the return part of those tickets, we would then have to buy new one-way tickets with all restrictions in place, to come home. Those one-way tickets could cost as much as $2,000 each. That not only can’t be justified, it can’t even be explained.

The lady at the check-in counter saw our ticket price and immediately tried to get us better seats. She said to just leave the tickets with her and come back in an hour, which we did. She had tried unsuccessfully to get us First-Class seats upstairs in the 747, but did get us into row four in Business Class, with only six wider seats in a row, instead of the ten narrow seats per row, found back in cattle-class (perhaps better known as Economy). Emmy’s complaint? The armrests between the seats couldn’t be lifted so she could use some of my space for sleeping. (Well, it was something like that.)

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When we returned home, we were first in line. Since I was carrying a cane I had bought for my collection, they assumed I was handicapped, so asked that I board early and let Emmy take care of the luggage. (Boy was that tempting.)

They carefully made sure each piece of luggage belonged to a passenger. All the luggage was set on the ground near the plane, and we had to go out and put our own luggage into Lufthansa's luggage containers, then we immediately boarded the plane. If we had packed a bomb, we had to ride the plane.

The return flight to Los Angeles was just like any other 12 hours spent like tooth-paste in a tube, sardines in a can, peas in a pod, whatever.