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After her flight out of London was canceled because of the volcanic ash cloud clogging the airspace between England and the United States, a University of Maine journalism professor has a plan to get back to Orono.
Sunny Hughes left the country April 11 to speak at the Surveillance and Society Conference in London. She and her husband, Christopher Ross, were scheduled to leave Sunday. As of Wednesday night local time, Hughes and Ross were on a train from London to Paris, where they plan to rent a car, drive to Madrid and catch a flight to Bangor on April 26.
The April 14 ash explosion from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajoküll has stranded airline passengers in more than 20 European countries, according to media reports. Flights within the European continent resumed as of Sunday, but Hughes said the reports about flights from London’s Heathrow Airport are exaggerated.
“Most of the flights going out of there are all special purpose, for people who are really vulnerable,” Hughes said in a telephone interview. She said staying in London on the assumption her flight would be cleared for takeoff would have been a gamble.
Hughes first heard of the Iceland volcanic eruption from a colleague at the conference. After she verified the cancellation for herself, she was worried.
“My first thought was the kids,” Hughes said. She has two sons, 11 and 8 years old, who were with a babysitter. She arranged for a friend to pick up the kids and watch them until she could return, saying it was hard “trying to explain to an 8-year-old that a volcano was keeping us in London. He thought we were joking.”
Hughes is teaching two upper-level journalism courses this semester, which colleagues at the university have taken over in her absence. She hopes students will use the volcanic explosion and its effect on world travel as a learning opportunity.
“In some ways, this may have been fun for them, to see the international response to this story,” Hughes said. “On this continent, it’s a national emergency. It’s a little strange to be from the U.S. — I don’t think people there see it as a big deal.”
The professor noted the use of social media in keeping up-to-date on the latest volcano and flight schedule news while attempting to find a way home.
“I used Twitter and Facebook a lot, and this is another one of those examples where in an emergency people are connectng through social media,” she said. “Beyond the people we met in real life, people have been incredibly helpful on social media sites.”
Hughes is quick to point out that other travelers have it far worse than she and her husband do. She said there are people who have been sleeping on cots in the airports for five days. But while she is keeping things in perspective, she said the delay has taken a toll on her emotionally and financially.
A high international phone bill racked up while trying to schedule a flight out of any airport that still had planes in the air and the extra cost of food, lodging and travel for her extended stay in Europe were all paid out of pocket.
Now that she has a plan and can see the light at the end of the tunnel, Hughes is trying to make the most of the time she has left in the Old World.
“I’m enjoying [my time in Europe] now that we have a plan to fly out of Madrid on Monday, but I can’t say I’ve been enjoying myself the whole time,” she said.
She said there were many moments where her husband had to comfort her when she worried about her classes, kids and dog. “We’ve been through a lot of hell for the last few days,” she said.
